Increasing the protection of human rights in the face of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation - HTML5 video

Every day across the globe, people bravely speak out against injustice, often at great personal risk. Human rights defenders are at the forefront of promoting and protecting our human rights, natural resources, and shared planet, as well as playing a vital role in drawing attention to the harms created by abusive business practices and monitoring companies’ compliance with business and human rights standards. Human rights defenders are not anti-development, but they are often painted as such and face a range of attacks for merely speaking up against business-related human rights harms, especially in jurisdictions where the rule of law is weak and respect for human rights is lacking.

Hungarian Capital in Foreign Media. Three Strategic Models of Influencing the Neighbourhood - Reports

The International Press Institute (IPI) published a new report written by regional media experts and investigative journalists on the investment of Hungarian capital in foreign media and the implications for the spread of Viktor Orbán’s “illiberal” model of media control

Justice for Journalists - Stakeholders

Justice for Journalists Foundation (JFJ) is a London-based non-governmental organization. The foundation was created in August 2018 by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of the Open Russia pro-democracy movement, an Amnesty International recognized prisoner of conscience and Putin’s most prominent critic, together with his former business partner, philanthropist and member of the Free Russia Forum’s standing committee Leonid Nevzlin.

JFJ funds journalistic investigations into violent crimes against media workers and helps professional and citizen journalists to mitigate their risks. JFJ’s activity consists of three main components:

• Grants for investigating violent crimes against media workers;
• Risk mapping via monitoring, analysing and publicising attacks against media workers;
• Risk management and prevention by organising security and safety trainings for non-English-speaking media workers in our Orkhan Dzhemal Media Safety Academy .

European Media and Platform Policy (EuromediApp) - Stakeholders

European Media and Platform Policy (EuromediApp) is a Jean Monnet network dedicated to studying, analysing and discussing benefits and challenges of digital platforms in Europe and world-wide.

By bringing together knowledge and research capacity from all over Europe and beyond, EuromediApp provides space for national and transnational deliberation on how future digital services should and will be governed. Working papers, teaching material, workshops, conferences and dedicated schools for advanced students are our working tools.

EuromediApp operates for three years (2020 – 2023) along three modules:

1. European political democracy (inclusion and exclusion, diversity and uniformity, trust and distrust);
2. Quality of European (news) ecology, including journalism, individualised procedures of political information, populism, polarisation and depolarisation, personalisation, scandalisation, information/propaganda/misinformation; and
3. European governance models of digital media and the internet by media/platform companies and governments, utopian and dystopian views of digital media and democracy.

Montenegro: Impunity must end for shooting of journalist Olivera Lakić - Article

MFRR praises cross-party approval of legislation strengthening protection of journalists

SLAPP and democracy, side effects and collateral damage - Article

Strategic lawsuits against public participation heavily impact on the citizens' right to be informed - that is why society needs to be able to respond to and to prevent this kind of abuse of legal tools. Here is a series of analysis and perspectives inspired by cases involving journalists and human rights defenders in Italy

Slovenia: Concerns over controversial changes to RTV programming - Article

The undersigned partners of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) today express concern over proposed modifications to news programming at the Slovenian public television RTV, which would reduce the broadcaster’s ability to inform the public and scrutinise power. We therefore urge the broadcaster’s management to enter into dialogue with its editorial board to ensure adjustments are proportionate and in the best interest of public interest reporting

Slovenia: MFRR welcomes end to STA funding crisis - Article

A deal signed on 8 November restored state funding to STA for the rest of the year and agreed to a court settlement on overdue back payments. However, MFRR partners raise concerns that UKOM's oversight of STA's financial activities could infringe on editorial independence, while the deal could weaken the financial sustainability of STA in the long term

Remembering Daphne - Article

International civil society coalition marks fourth anniversary of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia with renewed call for justice

Albania: MFRR urges government to scrap new Media and Information Agency - Article

MFRR partners express concern over a new Media and Information Agency that would centralise control over the government's public relations within a single entity. Until greater safeguards can be established to ensure the agency operates in a fair and transparent manner, we urge the government to cancel its establishment