Rethinking the EU’s media relations

Danish MEP Morten Løkkegaard on why he wants a ‘taskforce’ of EU-funded journalists to sell the Union to its citizens.

An ex-TV journalist who is now a member of the European Parliament is trying to restart the debate on generating wider media coverage of the EU institutions. Morten Løkkegaard, a former news anchor in Denmark, wants a “taskforce” of journalists in Brussels, funded by the European Commission, to connect the EU’s work more closely to European citizens.

He has produced a report on the subject, which passed the Parliament’s committee on culture and education on 23 June and which will be debated by the full Parliament on 6 September. The plan calls for the creation of a “group of correspondents”. Their job would be to write and produce stories on the EU with complete editorial independence, said Løkkegaard. But he is vague on specifics, including on how or where the material would be distributed.

His report comes four years after the rejection of similar plans to fight apathy toward the EU project.

“I kept on with the unpopular suggestions to provoke people enough,” Løkkegaard told European Voice. “I think I succeeded.”

Economic hardship

Løkkegaard claims that the EU has little choice but to set up its own agency of reporters, given the economic hard times of many media organisations, and the decline in the size of the Brussels press corps: “The market has not been able to solve this problem.” Citing the perception among many MEPs, EU officials and diplomats that EU affairs are insufficiently reported, he said: “We need another approach.”

He envisages something along the lines of state-supported national broadcasters, where, he says, governments take an arms-length approach allowing editorial independence. The funding would come from the Commission grants, but EU officials would not be involved in its work. “No one else seems to have the money. That’s not the best of all worlds, but it’s the best we can do,” said Løkkegaard, adding that it would create jobs and “hopefully it will end up showing that you can actually have a lot of stories”.

Løkkegaard also recommends revamping the €9 million-a-year online EuroparlTV news service and boostig outreach at the Parliament’s information offices across Europe. EU institutions should speed up the use of social media like Facebook or Twitter, and member states should improve coverage of the EU by their public broadcasters.

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The unlikely social networking champion

Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, can only dream of having so many online fans.

The European Parliament has led the way in expanding its online presence and focusing extra attention to new media such as Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

The Parliament is the only current EU institution that has a Facebook page, which it set up just prior to the European elections in June 2009, to offer a space where Europeans can debate with MEPs on political issues of the day. The site has attracted more than 76,000 fans as of July, and is expected to hit 100,000 by the end of the year, making it the world’s second most popular social media site in the world run by a government or quasi-government organisation, behind the White House, which has more than 660,000 fans.

Van Rompuy can boast nearly 3,000 of his Facebook page. Barroso does not have one.

The Commission and the Council of Ministers have no new media presence beyond commissioners’ blogs and online audio, photo and video feeds on the EU’s Europe by Satellite website, YouTube and Flickr.

The Parliament too has its own video streaming through the EuroparlTV online audiovisual service, which was launched in 2008 amid much fanfare at a cost of €9 million a year.

MEPs asked in May for a review of the project. The web channel’s goal was to showcase live coverage of meetings and professionally made video reports by contracted journalists about the Parliament’s work and EU policies to bring MEPs closer to their voters. Two years on, official figures on how many people actually visit the web-television’s four channels remain confidential. But officials admit that the numbers since its launch have not been impressive.

Still, they estimate some 15 million people have seen work produced by EuroparlTV, either online or via regional or national television stations that pick up stories from the service.

Slippery slope

Petra Kammerevert, a German centre-left MEP who sits on the culture and education committee, warned during debate on the report in May that issuing national guidelines on more EU coverage could be the “start of a slippery slope” toward limiting the independence of broadcasters.

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The taskforce idea has also raised concerns at the European Broadcast Union (EBU), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Press Association (IPA-API), which represents journalists covering the EU institutions. They all worry that the proposal could put in danger the jobs of reporters in Brussels.

“We are not sure that this proposal would help,” said Renate Schroeder, a director at the EFJ. Michael Stabenow from the IPA went further, accusing the committee and Løkkegaard of drawing “the wrong conclusions”. The result could be unfair competition and “a further decrease in the number of correspondents” in Brussels.

The taskforce idea is not a new one. It is similar to a plan to transform the EU’s Europe by Satellite (EbS) video-broadcast service into an EU news agency, which was promoted in 2006 by Margot Wallström, the then European commissioner in charge of communication policy. That plan was scrapped after press organisations complained that it would undermine the work of reporters covering the EU. A spokesman for Viviane Reding, the current commissioner in charge of communications policy, said that the Commission “totally disagreed” with any ideas to have the EU fund a group of correspondents.

Løkkegaard is still hopeful however, that despite misgivings about the report, including criticism from political groups in the Parliament, his ideas will survive a final vote.