Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-09-07-Speech-2-536"
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"en.20100907.33.2-536"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, to talk about freedom of expression in the European Union is to cover a broad subject area. I thank the Commission for the broad approach to this matter.
This is a debate about principles. From my own country, Germany, I can report that one political party, a political power, namely the Social Democrats, owns newspapers and publishing houses, in other words, it has large newspapers under its control. We citizens repeatedly ask ourselves whether it is good for parties to own parts of the media or whether it would actually be better for these two to be separate. Thus, there is a great deal to discuss with regard to this issue.
However, I would like to use today’s debate to talk instead about principles. The media are part of the foundation of our democracy. They inform people of factual circumstances and they scrutinise those who hold power. Of course, this task performed by the media also brings with it a large responsibility to use this power in a responsible manner. In this regard, it is important to protect peoples’ privacy and it is important that news is not reported in order to create a sensation, but to provide reliable information. In that respect, the media are part of the foundation of our civil democracy.
Independence is what is most important here. Publishers must grant their journalists independence. In the national structures that we have – we as the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) view this as positive, because the media are also part of our culture – we need independence from political influence, and neither must advertising customers influence the work of editorial staff.
If we take a look at the reality of journalism today, one of the greatest challenges for independent journalism is probably the subject of the Internet, in other words, the ability to access information on the Internet free of charge without knowing whether this information is correct or incorrect. That is a major challenge. In order to maintain high quality journalism, which we need to ensure, even in the age of the Internet, we must uphold the copyright of the journalists who supply high quality work. This is a key challenge for the future."@en1
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