Journalists across Europe face threats, arrests, restrictive legislation, abusive lawsuits, and verbal attacks by politicians which may be used as an excuse for violence against journalists. The unprecedented use of surveillance mechanisms, including spyware, intimidates journalists – as is its intent – and can deter them from investigating sensitive stories.

The Pegasus scandal, exposed by a collaborative network of media outlets led by the international organization Forbidden Stories, revealed in 2021 that nearly 200 journalists around the world had been targeted with that branded spyware, including journalists in Azerbaijan, France, Greece, Hungary, Spain, Türkiye, and the United Kingdom.

This was the main reason why the European Commission included an important article on protection of journalists’ sources and restriction of the use of spyware in its proposal for a European Media Freedom Act. France fought to the very end for a ‘national security’ exemption in the act, showing the lack of clear commitment by politicians to media freedom.

Thanks to intense advocacy by journalists’, digital rights and other civil society groups, however, this was not included in the final text adopted both by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers a few weeks ago. But the possibility of spyware being deployed against journalists will still need to be strictly monitored through transparency and judicial control.

All this has a potentially devastating impact on trust in journalism, a crucial currency for the future of the profession. It suggests that all who defend democracy stand with professional journalists and holistically support journalism as a public good. Indeed, there may have never been a time when accurate reporting was more important.

AI may be seen as a means to transform the information ecosystem. But generative AI in particular carries the risk of increased misinformation and, with it, falling public trust. The use of AI needs to be regulated accordingly to empower journalists to be quicker, more efficient and more innovative rather than substituting for their absence.

We need a broad alliance of civil society – readers and listeners, journalists’ organizations and trade unions, and academics—to sustain journalism and convince policy-makers and politicians that, just as environmental protection is urgent to counter the climate crisis, protection of journalists and journalism is essential to resolve the information crisis.

Without citizens enjoying the right to know, without accountability and transparency – without ethical journalism, in other words – there is no democracy.

The EU has done more than ever before to create a safer and more sustainable space for journalism, not least by pursuing the European Media Freedom Act. It has supported many projects linked to press freedom and journalistic self-regulation, media deserts, the safety of journalists, cross-border investigative journalism and freelances, as well as social dialogue, skills and training. Altogether, around 50 million euros per year have gone to media organizations from this title.

However, this is not enough. Independent professional journalism, the best antidote to misinformation, is expensive. Audience engagement, new journalistic formats, support for media literacy and the right use of AI are crucial to make journalism a tool for citizens to connect, debate, learn and engage in public discourse in today’s polarized societies. But that requires sustainable business models which guarantee decent working conditions and fair remuneration.

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), representing 73 journalists’ trade unions and associations in 45 countries, is calling upon EU policy-makers and civil society to stand up for journalism and journalists in Europe. In the run-up to the European Parliament elections in June, the EFJ has set out an agenda to make journalism as a public good viable and safe and to regulate AI.

The European Parliament elections will set the direction for the EU in the next term. We need a parliament and a commission committed to a fair Europe, respecting trade union and human rights, the rule of law, media freedom and pluralism, and overseeing implementation of the crucial regulatory mechanisms accomplished in the last five years: the Copyright Directive, the Digital Services Act, the Artificial Intelligence Act, the anti-SLAPP Directive and the European Media Freedom Act.

For facts to thrive, we need to join forces to build a healthy information ecosystem.