Free­dom and plu­ral­ism of the media are already included in the Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal Rights of the Euro­pean Union. How­ever, the Char­ter merely states they should “be respected” (art. 11. 2).

The Hun­gar­ian media law, the sit­u­a­tion in Ital­ian media and Rupert Murdoch’s ever-growing News Corp. have shown that media plu­ral­ism is far from being safe in Europe.

In our White Paper, we offered to replace the Arti­cle 11. 2 by a legally bind­ing arti­cle guar­an­tee­ing free­dom and plu­ral­ism of the media, such as “The free­dom and plu­ral­ism of the media are guar­an­teed. This plu­ral­ism is under­stood to be exter­nal, through the diver­sity of media own­er­ship struc­tures, and inter­nal, reflect­ing the diver­sity of society’s polit­i­cal opin­ions and cul­tural expression.”

What do you think?

Read more on media pluralism:

Cre­at­ing the con­di­tions for plu­ral­ist infor­ma­tion in our White Paper

Guar­an­tee­ing media plu­ral­ism: bet­ter the devil you know?

Argentina’s take on guar­an­tee­ing media plurality

Related posts:

1. Guar­an­tee­ing media plu­ral­ism: bet­ter the devil you know?
2. Define the notion of plu­ral­ism and include the right to infor­ma­tion on Europe in the EU Char­ter of Fun­da­men­tal rights
3. Argentina’s take on guar­an­tee­ing media plurality
4. Cit­i­zen ini­tia­tive for Media Plu­ral­ism: from Brus­sels to Bologna
5. Towards a Euro­pean Ini­tia­tive for Media Plu­ral­ism — March 31st, 2011