The latest draft of Europe’s new legislation to protect media freedom will seek to push social media platforms to identify “trustworthy news media” and give them guarantees against any arbitrary moderation and deletion of content.

The European Media Freedom Act, which was approved by the European Parliament’s committee on culture on January 24 after the approval of EU member states, reportedly relies on the journalism trust initiative mechanism. 

JTI is an official ISO-type standard published in December 2019 by the European Committee for Standardisation in a first for Europe’s news publishing industry. Any media outlet that strives for excellence by referring to the different clauses of the JTI standard has the option to be audited by an external, independent certifier. JTI was developed by Reporters Without Borders.

Under the European Media Freedom Act, platforms such as Meta and X will be encouraged to use JTI to identify trustworthy news media. 

The EMFA, which will need two more levels of voting to get the final approval, is expected to guard journalists against political interference and make it easier to operate in the EU. It will reportedly ban the use of spyware against journalists, guard against authorities forcing journalists to disclose sources, advocate for fair allocation of state advertising and require states to ensure editorial independence.

However, reports claimed earlier that seven EU nations were pushing to legitimise spying on journalists under a “national security” exception in the EMFA. The request for the exemption was rejected by the EU Parliament.  

Newslaundry has extensively reported on the violation of press freedom in India and the need for better safeguards. Read here.

This report was published with AI assistance.