Gawain Towler

Unhappy with the way it is often reported in the media, the European Union is making free with taxpayers' money to develop a variety of methods aimed at ensuring the public receives only the "news" the Commission considers fit to print or broadcast. Gawain Towler reports from Brussels.

MOST people do not have the time or the inclination for the in-depth study of the actions of government. They rely on the media and make their electoral and other choices based on the information they receive. In former times this would have seemed to be an entirely rational action. Is that still the case?
 
Recently, especially since the Dutch and French rejections of the European Constitution the EU has taken it upon itself to try to guide the news –  most notably in the shape of Margot Wallstrom (who once in my hearing described herself as the "propaganda Commissioner") and her Communications Directorate General. The EU Communications White Paper laid the groundwork. The Commission believes that European institutions have failed to communicate their message properly. Time after time, research has suggested that the more informed people were about the European project the more they supported it.
 
There has been a problem, however, in the way in which the pure European Union message has been delivered to the people. The interface was with the media. The media the EU dealt with were invariably Brussels-based and suffered the same failures as the institutions – or, if they were not in Brussels they weren’t always friendly.
 
Various strategies have been tried. One was simple bullying, as in the brutal treatment of whistle-blowers such as Hans-Martin Tillack. Then there is a concerted effort to “bribe” regional journalists to report on the activities of Brussels. Here the European Parliament Journalist Scheme is a key example, along with projects such as the European Parliament Journalism Prize and the Young European Journalist of the Year award.

Unfortunately for the EU, none of this seems to be working quickly enough, so somebody somewhere had the bright idea that rather than encouraging journalists, why not short-circuit the system and provide undigested content direct? Hence the proliferation of Commissioner blogs, EU sanctioned blogs, official YouTube sites and so on.
 
Now there is another new approach:  in-house journalists. Not press officers, mind you, but journalists.
 
Put it this way, even subsidised journalists require wages. News organisations are businesses  beholden to their shareholders. They need to continuously look at their costs and profits. If the institutions could provide copy, or in the case of radio and television, packages that are bespoke to the regional and national interests, why would media organisations bother to waste their money sending journalists to cover the Parliament or the other institutions?
 
Later this year (when technical problems have been solved) we will see the launch of EuroparlTV. Run by Spanish firm Mostra, it will have four channels including one for schools. According to the company’s link man in the Parliament, Patrick Delfosse, "Mostra's international team of 22 journalists have worked in collaboration with CIRCOM regional TV stations across Europe to respond to the challenge of enticing EU citizens to get involved and have their say!"

At the head of the operation will be Michael Shackleton, one of the most senior civil servants at the Parliament. Whether he means to or not, he will influence how the coverage is presented. The fact that Mostra's income is, from a glance at its website, almost entirely from EU sources also a concern.
 
Meanwhile the new contract for parliamentary coverage for regional ITV stations requires that "suitable regional and political balance shall be observed", allowing the Parliament to define what is suitable.
 
The European Council has also decided to set up a TV station, specifically to provide content for national and regional broadcasters. This will allow the EU to decide which and what comments are recorded and broadcast.
 
The Commission already subsidises the TV station EuroNews, a strange Orwellian rolling channel which trumpets EU achievements through a disembodied voice in all the languages of Europe, and it is now setting up a radio station to  produce programmes "from a European point of view".
 
Of course all this control of media will cost the propagandised taxpayer millions of pounds a year.
 
For those independent journalists operating in Brussels things are becoming very difficult. Advertisers have been telephoned after unflattering articles have appeared in newspapers. The Commission is launching a scheme whereby it, not editors, might decide who can report on Brussels, a concern flagged up even by the normally supine International Federation of Journalists.
 
TV camera crews have been told on more than one occasion that they are not to film "dissent" such as, infamously, an interview with Nigel Farage. European Union money is flowing into private "websites with EU content", particularly through the BlogActive program.
 
If all this is not bad enough the Commission is planning to set up "training seminars for editors of high school magazines" aimed at “reporting EU affairs".
 
So if you find your child's school magazine extolling the wonders of an EU history project, you will know why.