High level Dialogue on Press Freedom and the UN Plan of Action on Safety of Journalists and the Issue of Impunity.

Why to raise awareness and strengthen political and diplomatic commitment?

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Strengthening democracy and media freedom and pluralism in Europe.

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  While there were hundreds of alerts across Europe in 2021, there were also positive developments that were welcomed by media freedom actors . In the beginning of the year, the European Commission announced the establishment of an Expert group against SLAPPs with a specific mission to advise the Commission on matters related to fighting SLAPPs or supporting the journalists and media outlets that were targeted by them. ECPMF's legal advisor Flutura Kusari is also a part of this group and the EC is expected to propose legislative and non-legislative measures to counter SLAPPs.  The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, announced the details of a new Media Freedom Act during her annual State of the Union speech on 15 September. In that same month, the Commission adopted a Recommendation to Member States to improve the safety of journalists, both on-line and offline . It called for the creation of independent national services to support journalists i...
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Journalists and media actors face several different types of attacks.

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  Journalists and media actors sometimes even fac e several types of attacks at the same time, such as a verbal and a physical attack performed within the same incident by the same aggressor. In this section we show how many alerts involved a certain type of attack.   The types of attacks are grouped into 5 main types with detailed information provided below:        Physical: In more than 1 out of 5 incidents (21.1%, 132 alerts) media actors were physically attacked. In 49 incidents (7.8%) media actors were injured. Three journalists were killed: the investigative journalist Peter R. de Vries in the Netherlands, the television reporter and veteran crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz in Greece, and the local radio presenter Hazım Özsu in Turkey.  Verbal: In more than 4 out of 10 incidents (41.1%, 257 alerts), media actors were verbally abused. This includes intimidation/threatening (25.2%, 158 alerts), insult/ab‐ use (78 alerts), discrediting (32), hara...
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Legal pressures against media outlets remained a concern.

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  Media freedom in Greece was thrust into the international spotlight in April 2021 when well-known Greek crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz was gunned down out‐ side his house in Athens. He had returned home from a shift on a daytime show on Star TV when he was ambushed by two men on a moped and shot at least six times with a silenced weapon, killing him instantly. The assassination, the first of a journalist in Greece since 2010, shocked the country’s journalistic community and was met with pledges by the Prime Minis‐ ter to bring those responsible to justice. The killing also led to greater scrutiny of the suffocating climate for independent journalism in a fragmented landscape marked by a politically polarised press. Even before the assassination, 2021 began with a worrying start for Greece’s journalistic community. In January, a new plan for policing protests was launched by the Ministry of Civil Protection, raising concerns it could seriously limit the ability of journalists ...
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