REPORTING THE EUROPEAN UNION

Abstract

Abstract This article sketches a picture of the journalists involved in European Union (EU) reporting. Firstly, it presents an overview of the entire body of EU-accredited journalists, examining how they are distributed across the various nationalities, the different forms of media and whether an historical evolution can be traced in either distribution. Secondly, the mechanisms influencing the news flow on EU topics are described, using information gathered from numerous interviews with EU journalists from 10 European countries. The researchers distinguish structural, geographical, economical and policy-related obstacles influencing the EU newsflow. As an example of a media-related obstacle the authors focus on the privileged position of the Financial Times. Keywords: accreditationEU correspondentsEU journalismEuropean public spherenewsflow Notes 1. For example, a Turkish journalist who also reports on the EU for media in the Turkish part of Cyprus, or a Briton for American media. Consequently, a clear distinction was made in the graphs between accreditations per medium/member state/sex and the number of accredited correspondents. The fact that some journalists work for different media or countries made it impossible to filter out all "doubles". However, it was possible to remove doubles from the graphs which specifically showed the "number of correspondents" instead of the "number of accreditations". 2. The other e-journalists were reporters from Financial Europe Email (two), an Internet financial agency, from BruxInfo (two), a Hungarian news service on the Internet, and from Abhaber.com (one), a Turkish news service. 3. The remaining 10 journalists work for Brussels regional television (four), for the Francophone Catholic Radio (one), Radio Alma (one), BRD (one), Contact-inter (one) and South East Europe TV Exchange (two). 4. Using the "Press Contacts" links on the websites of the various political groups represented in the European Parliament, we found a total of 90 press attachés, most of whom (41) work for the European People's Party-European Democraties (EPP-ED). 5. In the Justus Lipsius building, a separate room is provided for each of the 25 Member States to hold such briefings.