Curbing Media, Crippling Debate: Soft Censorship in Bulgaria - Reports

Based on a series of interviews with journalists and media experts from Bulgaria, this report provides an overview of soft censorship in Bulgaria and suggests actions to reverse this trend

State-media financial relations in the countries of South East Europe - Reports

A regional overview of monetary flows between the state and the media is South East Europe demonstrates the systematic misuse of public funds for establishing control over media

Filter Bubbles, Echo Chambers, and Online News Consumption - Academic Sources

This article provides an empirical starting point for understanding how novel means of news consumption, in particular social media and search engines, affect ideological polarization of readers

ECPMF Alarm Centre for Female Journalists under Threat - Support Centres

On 8 March 2016, the ECPMF has created a special Women’s Reporting Point to address and raise awareness on increasing threats against female journalists.

Threats can be reported via encrypted messaging. The secure emails will only be opened by female staff at ECPMF headquarters and their contents will remain confidential. To provide appropriate legal assistance and solidarity to female journalists or media workers who report their cases, ECPMF is partnering with the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and its Italian branch FNSI.

The rationale of this support measure stems from the consideration that female journalists are not only attacked because of their profession, they are also threatened because they are women, as pointed out also by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. Gender-based threats, such as sexual and abusive comments, threats of rape or publishing pictures and phone numbers on sex and dating websites target women more often than men.  

ECPMF encourages all women to report attacks in order to seek help, but also to make the dimension of attacks against journalists visible: the reported cases will be collected in a database – with details of the woman’s identity removed in order to protect her – as basis of an analysis to show the scale of the problem across Europe.

Media Freedom on the Internet: An OSCE Guidebook - Manuals

The Guidebook deals with the legal issues concerning Internet freedom and blocking policies of OSCE memberstates

European Audiovisual Observatory - Stakeholders

The European Audiovisual Observatory is a public service organisation, part of the Council of Europe.

The Observatory was created in 1992 to collect and distribute information about the audiovisual industries in Europe, with the aim to promote greater transparency. The work of the Observatory focuses on the following fields: Film, Broadcasting, Home video, On-demand audiovisual services and Public policy on the audiovisual sector. The Observatory provides information from an economic and legal point of view on audiovisual markets in Europe and their financing. It also analyses and reports on the legal issues affecting the different sectors of the audiovisual industry.

The Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory (IRIS) reports monthly on the most important legal developments for the audiovisual industry in 39 European countries.

The Observatory also provides access to free on-line databases, such as AVMS Database on the transposition of the AVMS directive into national legislation, IRIS Merlin on legal information on the audiovisual sector in Europe, KORDA on funding for film and audiovisual works, Lumiere on admissions of films released in Europe and MAVISE on TV services in Europe.

Peace journalism handbook - Manuals

Bianet released a handbook on Peace-Journalism, proposing a professional model that is human rights-oriented, fair instead than “objective” and infused with feminist theory

Court rules online news sites are not liable for offensive readers’ comments - Legal Resources

In the MTE case, the ECHR tested the principles set forth in the controversial Grand Chamber’s Delfi case concerning the notion of liability of news portals for readers' comment

Internet Censorship Circumvention Tools: Escaping the Control of the Syrian Regime - Academic Sources

Taking Syria as a case study, this paper examines whether Internet censorship succeeded in preventing Internet users from reaching censored online content during 2010−2012

Russian surveillance law - Legal Resources

In a case related to alleged mobile phone surveillance, the European Court of Human Rights decided that an editor in Russia was entitled to claim to be a victim of a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.