1/22/13, "Leveson: EU wants power to sack journalists," UK Telegraph, Waterfield, Brussels
A European Union report has urged tight press regulation and demanded that Brussels officials are given control of national media supervisors with new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists.
The “high level” recommendations that will be used to draft future EU legislation also attack David Cameron for failing to automatically implement proposals by the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry for a state regulation of British press.
A "high level" EU panel, that includes Latvia’s former president and a former German justice minister, was ordered by Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president, last year to report on "media freedom and pluralism". It has concluded that it is time to introduce new rules to rein in the press.
“All EU countries should have independent media councils,” the report concluded.
“Media councils should have real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.”
As well as setting up state regulators with draconian powers, the panel also recommended that the European Commission be placed in overall control in order to ensure that the new watchdogs do not breach EU laws....
“Ensuring the independence of regulators across the member states and their cooperation will be high on my agenda,” she said.
“The recommendations in this report are an important basis for the tough and principled discussion we urgently need in the EU.”
The report’s recommendations have sparked anger in Britain, a country that is often criticised by European officials for its media coverage of EU issues....
Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP for Clacton, attacked the report for making an “extraordinary, and deeply disturbing proposal”.
“Having EU officials overseeing our free press - and monitoring newspapers to ensure they comply with "European values" - would be quite simply intolerable,” he said.
“This is the sort of mind-set that I would expect to find in Iran, not the West. This kooky idea tells us little about the future of press regulation. It does suggest that
the European project is ultimately incompatible with the notion of a free society.”
Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, compared the proposals to “Orwell's 1984”. “This is a flagrant attack on press freedom. To hear that unelected bureaucrats in Brussels want the power to fine and suspend journalists is just outrageous,” he said."
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1/22/13, "Cameron ticked off by the EU for not backing Leveson," UK Independent, Andy Smith
"They think plurality is so important that they imply that EU governments should be subsidising investigative journalism or loss-making newspapers, an idea that is not going to be well received in the UK....
“That judge Leveson’s recommendations should have been rejected out of hand by some politicians in high office, is not very reassuring. If nothing else, this resistance by itself underscores the urgent need for supervisory bodies that can and do act, instead of being supervisory in name only,” they add.
The report calls for every EU state...(to) have a media council with “real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.”...
OK, so a regulator appointed under the terms of an EU directive tells a newspaper editor that one of the paper’s writers has had his/her “journalist status” rescinded … no, not a good idea."...
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