Director of the European Federation of Journalists tells BIRN that independent media in the region are fighting to survive amid hostile government policies, unstable incomes and challenges posed by big tech companies and AI.
She said that in 30 years of working in media organisations, she did not recall a time when journalists were as unsafe as they are now. “There are unprecedented attacks on the safety of journalists,” she said.
“I have been in the business for over 30 years and have never heard of such an amount of attacks against journalists in Europe, Turkey, or outside the EU, online but also physical attacks – from all kinds of different actors, but specifically also from political actors – as we have today,” Schroeder said.
Schroeder joined the International Federation of Journalists, IFJ, in 1993. She has been engaged with the EFJ since 2003.
Her workload as director at the EFJ’s Brussels office includes advocacy at the EU and Council of Europe level, presentation of EFJ views at international meetings, fact-finding media freedom missions, sitting on juries that award journalistic prizes, and work with EFJ expert groups on issues like freelance reporters, media literacy and digital journalism.
Schroeder obtained a bachelor’s degree in international relations and political science at Boston University in 1988 and a master’s degree in the same subject at Berlin’s Free University in 1992.
Before joining the EFJ and defending independent media and journalists, she worked at the United Nations in New York, at the research institute FAST in Berlin and at the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation in Brussels.
Information ‘warfare’ undermines trust in journalism
Schroeder said that illiberal governments’ warfare over information had damaged trust in the media worldwide.
“This information warfare, we can say, be it from Putin, from Trump and all the illiberal governments alike, has had an incredible impact on trust in journalism,” she said, underlining concerns about new laws designed to increase government controls over the media.
“We are very much concerned that governments misuse disinformation to censor journalism. We have seen attempts in Turkey, of course, and we’ve had attempts in Croatia and in several countries where they wanted to use ‘information laws’ to censor journalists, and we are always against that,” she said.
She added that Russian-style “foreign agent” laws will worsen the situation in countries like Turkey, Bosnia and Georgia.
“I think I don’t have to explain that this is completely against media freedom, and is being misused by Putin and the like,” she said.
In recent years, governments in a range of countries including Georgia, Turkey, Hungary and Republika Srpska in Bosnia, have increasingly tried to target “foreign influences”, proposing laws that many see as intended mainly to prevent public scrutiny and curb media freedom.
New technologies and social media companies managed by big tech companies have worsened the plight of the independent media, Schroeder asserted.
“The models of big tech almost always favour lies, disinformation, hatred and incitement – everything that we are fighting in journalism. Without regulation, we see what’s happening; I’d want to call it social networks and not social media, because for me this has nothing to do with media, because there are no standards and there are no judgments.
“Without regulation, it will get worse,” she said, stressing the importance in this context of the European Media Freedom Act.
“What we need now is enforcement, meaning transparency, dialogue with different stakeholders, but also more resources for civil society, because they play a very important act here, to balance this this completely imbalance of power,” she added.
Turkey now a ‘role model’ for violators
Schroeder told BIRN that media freedoms in the Balkans have deteriorated over all the years she has been following them at the head of Europe’s largest journalistic organisation.
“I think the situation has further deteriorated. I have followed the region for years, and, especially in Bosnia, Serbia and Turkey, the situation has deteriorated further,” she observed.
Turkey had become a “role model” for other countries when it comes to media rights violations, she warned.
“Turkey has been a role model for other countries for too long. I am almost speechless because it has been for such a long time, and I think we will not get any improvement. I can only hope that a new government [in Turkey] will have a different attitude towards the media,” she said.
“We have also seen from what’s happening in Poland and Hungary; once the media is captured It is very difficult to rebuild it. Turkey’s public broadcaster is a complete propaganda machine for [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and will take years to regain trust,” she said.
Schroeder urges journalists to take a “holistic” approach to the various struggles ahead.
“We see in those countries where you still have strong unions that the situation is better, like in the Nordic countries. Capacity-building of unions and associations is very important for us because they represent journalists. On the one hand, they have to fight for better working conditions and, on the other, they have to fight for this holistic approach of enabling an environment that allows journalists to work,” she said.
“We need a holistic approach. We need regulation, we need enforcement, but we also need an audience that’s still interested in journalism and is able to protect journalism. So we need media literacy; we need journalists going into classes, to explain to students what the difference between a journalist and an influencer is,” she concluded.