Europe’s newspaper publishers underline their active contribution to media literacy

Brussels, 21 August 2009

ENPA – the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association – welcomes the European Commission’s acknowledgement of the position of publishers as significant contributors to media literacy in the European Commission Recommendation on Media Literacy which has been adopted on 20 August. ENPA particularly highlights the following three points for consideration in the ongoing work in Europe on media literacy:

1) A close involvement of publishers in media literacy is essential. The new Commission Recommendation calls on Member States to “ensure a close involvement of traditional publishers” in initiatives on digital media literacy (recital 24). This recognition by the EU of the positive contribution that publishers have devoted for many years now to increasing media literacy amongst citizens is essential for Member States to take seriously in their design of their media literacy programmes. Publishers stand ready to share their expertise and cooperate where appropriate on future projects for media literacy.

2) Citizens’ increased media literacy is essential for democracy and copyright awareness also needs to be better understood by the public, as the Recommendation recognises. ENPA is one of the key advocates towards policymakers at European level of a media literacy skill set that ensures a positive contribution by citizens to democracy. Newspapers provide interactive platforms enabling citizens to enter enlightening debates and interact with each other not only in the paper product but also digitally and sometimes even by organizing public debating sessions.
Mr Lehari Jr. ENPA President said: “Newspaper publishers hold a joint responsibility with politicians for ensuring freedom of expression in a healthy democracy”.

Copyright awareness has also been highlighted as a necessary part of media literacy. ENPA believes that copyright awareness is particularly important with regard to the unauthorised use of newspapers’ copyrighted material by news aggregators.

3) ENPA is ready to cooperate on future research on media literacy: The European Commission has indicated in its recommendation that it will encourage research projects on media literacy in the framework of existing programmes. ENPA members have a wealth of experience to contribute to such valuable research, including to the studies regarding the dissemination of personal data online and the use of search engines, as announced by the Recommendation.

Nevertheless, ENPA highlights that a citizen must have the skills to analyze news as part of their media literacy capacity because newspapers play such an important role in society and in the defence of democracy. A more media-specific reference in particular on the valuable role of local, regional and national newspapers in democratic society could have been made clearer in the recommendation.

Media literacy has been a part of newspapers’ efforts for many years already. Newspaper publishers place fundamental importance on raising awareness amongst not only younger citizens but also older ones too about the reasons it is necessary to have an active, independent multiplatform press voice in democracy. Many different projects are underway across Europe to promote media literacy through reading newspapers (paper and digital).

Newspapers’ contribution to enhancing citizenship is therefore very valuable indeed because of the richness and variety of the information that they provide and ENPA is working to ensure that all stakeholders including European policymakers better understand this.

ENPA produced its own vision of media literacy policy at the European level in May 2009 as one of the key results of the ENPA Media Literacy Working Group’s work programme over its first year in operation. The ENPA position paper on media literacy is available upon request.