What a para­dox! The Euro­pean Union, treaty after treaty, is always more pow­er­ful, influ­enc­ing more and more local poli­cies inside the dif­fer­ent Euro­pean states. 500 mil­lions cit­i­zens’ lifestyle depends on the Euro­pean Union.

We then expect infor­ma­tion to cir­cu­late more than ever, always more trans­par­ent. But it is not that easy. At least if we look at the marked regres­sion of Euro­pean cor­re­spon­dents based in Brussels.

Why this resent­ment with Europe? This prob­lem could affect Euro­pean cohe­sion in the per­spec­tive of a politic and inte­grant Europe? This dis­af­fec­tion also brings prob­lems in term of democracy.

One rea­son to explain the decreas­ing num­ber of jour­nal­ists in Brus­sels is related to the salary. This cost is too high for the edi­to­r­ial staff to send cor­re­spon­dents. For­mer pres­i­dent of the Inter­na­tional Press Asso­ci­a­tion Lorenzo Con­soli gave his opin­ion in the French weekly mag­a­zine Mar­i­anne in an arti­cle pub­lished in April 2010. This prob­lem also comes from the Bel­gian tax sys­tem that imposes to be taxed in Bel­gium and not in the coun­try of which the jour­nal­ist comes from.

Another prob­lem comes from a too for­mat­ted com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Spokes­men are too con­trolled and that leads to a lack of trans­parency. With José Manuel Bar­roso, the whole insti­tu­tional com­mu­ni­ca­tion is avail­able online, so peo­ple tend to think that they do not need to send jour­nal­ists to Brus­sels anymore.

Fur­ther­more, we also think that some other rea­sons could explain the lack of jour­nal­ists in Brussels.

After 10 new mem­bers adhe­sion in 2004 and Bul­garia and Ruma­nia in 2007, many jour­nal­ists from East­ern Europe came to the Euro­pean cap­i­tal. But it was just trendy and it did not last. Peo­ple in those coun­tries were full of hope after the adhe­sion, at least at the start. Nowa­days, after an eco­nomic cri­sis, a kind of dis­en­chant­ment replaced the eupho­ria of the begin­nings. This dis­en­chant­ment was clearly vis­i­ble when many Brussels-based jour­nal­ists went back home.

Medias, notably fac­ing the decrease of adver­tis­ing in their pub­li­ca­tions, try to reduce their spend­ing. And the first vic­tims were jour­nal­ists from “inter­na­tional pol­icy” or “for­eign affairs”, sec­tion in which Europe still appears incor­rectly. In a media uni­verse based on “stari­sa­tion” and sub­ject to the increas­ing pres­sure of rat­ings, polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism has increas­ingly been get­ting the short end of the stick of the infor­ma­tion. Euro­pean polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion also suf­fers from this trend.

The main­stream cul­ture is based on “the power of the Inter­net” in an instan­ta­neous, news journalism’s pre­dom­i­nance. Inves­tiga­tive or analy­sis jour­nal­ism are the vic­tims of this need for speed. Euro­pean insti­tu­tions, and spe­cially Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, give the whole infor­ma­tion online and jour­nal­ists do not have to move to Brus­sels any­more. On the one hand, it is pos­i­tive, but on the other hand, media own­ers think it is not use­ful to send jour­nal­ist to Brus­sels or Stras­bourg. Jour­nal­ist just need to take offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions from RAPID Commission’s web­site. Infor­ma­tion con­tent is then impov­er­ished, because of the one-source prin­ci­ple. Finally, the jour­nal­ist just does a “copy-paste” from offi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion rea­son­ing, with­out any added value.

Jean Lemaitre

Trans­la­tion : Ben­jamin Helson

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