A year after the murder of Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, the EPP Group has organised a public hearing to be held on Thursday entitled ‘The fight for the truth: free and independent journalism in today’s world’, with the aim of increasing awareness of the importance of having free and independent journalists across Europe and beyond.
The EPP Group has always taken an active role in ensuring that journalists are protected, and in pushing for independent investigations following the murders of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta and Jan Kuciak in Slovakia. Here, we are not only talking about freedom of expression, but about the basic right to factual information. Citizens deserve to know what people in authority are doing, and they can only be provided with such information if journalists are left to do their work without interference, and in the most free and independent manner.
Manfred Weber MEP, Chairman of the EPP Group, who will open the hearing, said: “Media freedom is a fundamental right and a prerequisite for functioning democracy everywhere in Europe. If journalists cannot do their job freely, in the long run, our democracies will cease to be democracies. That is why the EPP Group will not stop calling for justice for Daphne Caruana Galizia and Jan Kuciak.”
One of the main speakers of the hearing is the son of the Maltese murdered journalist, Matthew Caruana Galizia, who is also a journalist himself, having won the Pulitzer Prize. In his intervention, Matthew Caruana Galizia is expected to describe the number of threats which his mother had received before her murder and the role that digital journalism has in today’s world. Besides MEPs from the EPP Group, other speakers include a former Managing Editor of El País Daniel Alandete, and the Editor-in-Chief of Charter97.org Natallia Radzina. Paz Ferrin Quiles, who is a journalist and expert in political communication, will speak about the use of Artificial Intelligence in disinformation.
The hearing will take place on Thursday 18 October 2018 between 09.30 and 12.30 hrs in the European Parliament in Brussels and will be aired live on the EPP Group’s Facebook Page.
Sorce: EPP Group