EU propaganda: Commission to have online news service
Thursday 11 July 2013
Today, "EU affairs are under-represented in printed and digital media, in spite of their actual relevance to people's daily life", the contract document says. "Reporting on EU affairs is often scarce, irregular, lacks a broader European perspective and citizens do not have any specialized platform where they can find and share quality content on EU affairs".
Yet, we are told, the Commission considers that "independent media reporting about EU affairs is an important cornerstone of well-informed EU citizens and European public discourse". Providing information on EU affairs "characterised by independent, professional and high-quality reporting" has accordingly been included among "the 25 actions to improve the daily life of EU citizens proposed by the Commission in 2012".
One really does gasp at the idea that providing information on EU affairs will improve "the daily life of EU citizens", and all this for a maximum of €3.2 million. For that, the contractor has to develop and manage an online media dedicated to EU affairs, where a selection of articles from the international press (paper or online) as well as original contents will be published and distributed.
The website has to include (non-exhaustive list) editorials, thematic and multimedia files, videos, audio, photos, illustrations, graphics, maps and data journalism stories offering a variety of perspectives in a minimum of ten official EU languages.
The online media will provide the readers fresh content on a daily basis to increase readability and critical understanding of EU affairs, and will allow them to contribute and generate feedback and reactions. Contents, we are told, will serve pluralism and represent a balanced range of argumentation on key issues, allowing the reader to form his own opinion.
In particular, the Commission wants a daily "best of the web". A global mass of information is now available on the Internet (through traditional media, blogs, documents or new technologies and networks), it intones. However, citizens often lack time to select, prioritize and synthesize data of their interest. By monitoring, researching and publishing content available online, the online media shall offer a selection of contents on EU affairs.
Rather than merely a mirror of other media, though, the potential contractor is told that online media has to offer "a new voice and new perspectives" on EU affairs "by producing original content and serving as a repository to user-generated materials".
The Commission is concerned that the online media "cannot remain indifferent to the spread of participatory media (blogs, forums, posts) on the web". Thus, it wants its site to be "a hub for moderating and organising debates to provide quality exchanges and, in a way, summarise and create opinion".
The twenty pages of this contract document thus include a requirement to promote audience participation through comments, blogging, social media and other online techniques, as "a way of building communities of followers, getting new insights, and promoting discussion and debate".
For this, it must employ, "experts in journalism/journalists", with relevant higher education, degree and three years' professional experience in the field of journalism, with trained multimedia skills and a proven interest for European subjects (degree or European experience).
Amusingly, the WSJ is very sniffy about it, translating the tender offer as the EU thinking it has a bad reputation not because it does anything wrong, but because the 500-odd reporters who comprise the regular EU press corps are doing a lousy job at fostering "awareness and understanding of EU affairs".
Yet the Commission already employs 122 spokespersons, press officers and media secretaries to talk up its policies, and another 50-odd staffers in its Directorate General for Communications.
That department's €103.7 million annual budget covers funding for the Presseurop clipping service, Euronews television and Euranet radio broadcasts. The EU also boasts its own YouTube channel, several newsletters and even a bookstore, which publishes everything from posters to children's literature.
There are blogs too, although these have had mixed success. But there was also the Blogactivinitiative, which is rather like watching paint dry in 22 languages. I suspect this initiative is going to be no better.
There are blogs too, although these have had mixed success. But there was also the Blogactivinitiative, which is rather like watching paint dry in 22 languages. I suspect this initiative is going to be no better.
Richard North 11/07/2013
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