Today the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) publishes the latest edition of the consortium’s monitoring report, compiling and analysing all media freedom violations recorded on Mapping Media Freedom between January and June 2023 in all EU Member States and candidate countries.
In the six month period, the MFRR partners recorded 575 media freedom violations in European Union Member States and candidate countries, involving 844 individuals or media outlets. 307 of those took place in EU Member States, while 268 occurred in candidate countries.
In the EU the most common type of attacks were verbal attacks (35.8%) such as insults and discrediting of journalists, to which this report dedicates one of its thematic chapters. Legal attacks were the second most prominent category (24.8%), followed by physical attacks (21.2%), attacks on property (16.9%), and censorship (14.3%).
The current monitoring report offers an overview of the media freedom situation across the EU and candidate countries in the first half of 2023 and it starts with a thematic chapter on the crackdown on independent media in Turkey amidst devastating earthquakes and national elections that took place at the beginning of the year, followed by a chapter on the war in Ukraine and its repercussions on media freedom.
The report also covers the rise in attacks on journalists and media workers by police officers and security forces and, as mentioned earlier, the rise in the discrediting of journalists and reputational attacks against them to hinder their work.
The report is divided into the following chapters: an overview offering data and graphics about the press freedom situation in the EU and in candidate countries in 2023, four thematic sections with quantitative and qualitative analysis regarding the aforementioned topics, and country reports offering a summary of the most relevant threats in the following EU countries: Italy, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Germany, and France; and in the following candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia.
You can download the report in full using the button below.
