Although freedom of press is not 100% guaranteed, there’s good news for Belgium. Reporters Without Borders published its annual World press freedom index yesterday, and Belgium seems to be in good standing in the world.

It moved from 9^th to 7^th from 2017 to 2018. The rank is of course led by the Nordic countries, with Norway (1^st), Sweden (2^nd), the Netherlands (3^rd) and Finland (4^th). Jamaica is the only non-European country which is ranked before Belgium, as this Caribbean country got the 6^th position.

In the national report, RSF, is actually satisfied with the legal framework which allows the journalists to do their job properly. A 2005 law on protection of sources is indeed “one of the most protective in the World. Very strict conditions must be met for the authorities to be able to override this right”. “Only an investigating judge can give the order, and only when a person’s physical safety is at stake and the required information cannot be obtained in any other”, the report added. It, however, points out that compliance in practise with that law is sometimes relatively affected.

The weak point of Belgium lies within diversity. “Media ownership is very concentrated, with a handful of businessmen owning most of the newspapers”, RSF finds.

In any case, Belgium is currently part of the best European countries. But freedom of press can quickly go down, as you might have noticed with the murders of journalists in Malta or Slovakia over the past months. Although you may sometimes disagree with news or journalists, protection of journalism is of major importance in democracies.

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This proposal, which had been announced during the seminar held on October 10th at UGent University,  was subsequently illustrated and discussed during a press conference at the Press Club Brussels Europe on October 11th.

Given the high number of serious attacks against  Italian journalists and bloggers (321 so far in 2017, 3406 from 2006 to date) and the almost impossible task of identifying  and punishing  the attackers it is necessary to create in Italy (and elsewhere) a “hotspot”, a public platform to be used to convey information and urgent alerts to the institutions concerning the most serious violations of the right to inform  and to be informed.

Alberto Spampinato, director of the « Ossigeno per l’Informazione » explained that the proposal, which is the result of ten years’ experience in monitoring attacks in Italy, “is adressed to all Western European countries since in each one of them both a regular and independent  monitoring  of violations, as it is done in Italy, is necessary together with hotspots able to work as active interfaces of the Platform created by the Council of Europe to promote the protection of journalism and the safety of journalists. Moreover universities in each country should be engaged in training specialised observers able to to manage these platforms”.

Finally, Spampinato did also invite media and institutions to use a suitable language concerning violent attacks and warned against the misuse of unfounded defamation accusations against journalists and bloggers. These actions, he said, are clearly aimed at preventing the right to inform and to be informed. “We have to say that these actions are spreading a kind of violent censorship. We have to call it by its real name. We have to ask that the deliberate violations of the right to information are punished as a crime, as it happens for other rights » he concluded. This is what has been discussed yesterday during a seminar with students and teachers that Ossigeno helped to organise at Ghent University with the participation of representatives of the European Federation of Journalists, IPI (the International Press Institute) and the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) in Leipzig.

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