As reported by the Newspaper Society: The NS and NPA have joined European newspaper, magazine and journalists’ organisations in calling on all journalists, editors, publishers and citizens across Europe to sign a petition this week to remove the threat to press freedom from new draft data protection regulations and introduce a legally binding exemption to ensure that the rights of journalists are safeguarded.
The European Newspaper Publishers Association, European Publishers Council, European Magazine Media Association and the European Federation of Journalists are extremely concerned that the approach taken by both the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties (“LIBE”) Committee and in the latest Council text on Article 80 of the draft General Data Protection Regulation would seriously undermine press freedom and journalism if either were adopted as part of a future Regulation, which would be directly binding upon all EU Member States.
In a statement issued this week, they said: “A directly binding exemption in the draft Regulation for journalistic data processing is essential to ensure that journalists and publishers can continue fulfilling their democratic mission as regards investigating, reporting, writing and publishing editorial content without any obstacle, and to guarantee that sources are adequately protected.”
Such an exemption is missing from the Committee’s draft report to be debated and voted upon next week, although other European Parliament committees’ helpful amendments have been tabled and discussions in the Council of Ministers will continue.
