Liberties Media Freedom Report 2024

Report's Key findings

• Strong media ownership concentration continues to define domestic media markets, and little was done in 2023 to increase media ownership transparency.
• Media outlets face increasingly uncertain financing frameworks.
• Public service media (PSM) are under government control in Hungary and were in a state of uncertainty in Poland. In Croatia and Italy, there are growing concerns about government influence over PSM.
• While many countries maintain independent media regulatory bodies, this is not the case in Hungary, where it is under government control, and in several other Member States, where current practices give the government too much influence over its structure, financial support or function.
• Levels of public trust in media remain low.
• Journalists across Europe continue to face intimidation, surveillance, attacks and detention. In addition to these threats, they also face abusive lawsuits.
• Freedom of expression and access to information remain areas of concern for media in many EU Member States. Journalists who are critical of the government may find themselves excluded from press conferences or other official events, or denied access to documents that should be made available to them.
• Hate speech against journalists remains widespread, particularly on social media.

Recommendations

• Monitoring of the enforcement of the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), particularly in areas such as independence of PSM, protection against surveillance, issuing of guidelines for media ownership database, establishing of a database on state advertisement, ensure transparency in media financial support.
• Alignment of EMFA and the Digital Services Act (DSA).
• Uphold the monitoring of beneficial ownership in media companies.
• Monitor the implementation of the Anti-SLAPP directive.
• Monitor and report on the implementation of the EU Recommendation on the Safety of Journalists and
• related EU legislation, such as the Whistleblowing Directive.

European Media Freedom Act, a focus

The European Parliament gave final passage to the EMFA in 2024, making it law across the EU. The law represents a significant step forward toward a more balanced and pluralistic media system, laying down minimum standards for Member States, national media authorities, self-regulatory bodies, and editorial staff to combat threats to media freedom and pluralism, such as media capture by governments and companies, the safety and protection of journalists, or the editorial independence of media outlets.

The EMFA falls short of tackling numerous pressing issues within the European media landscape, such as full protection of journalistic sources from surveillance, weak enforcement capabilities in media capture, a fragmented application of the media ownership database, which remains at national level.