Poland discusses reforming state media while a lawsuit in Greece threatens to silence journalists, with social streaming and media giants collecting user data.
The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) consortium completed a two-day mission to Poland on 16-17 September, holding meetings with the Minister of Justice, Adam Bodnar, the Ministry of Culture, as well as journalists, publishers, regulators, and media law experts.
The mission focused on measures to reform public media, the protection of journalists from Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) and proposals to reform the media landscape in line with the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA).
The meetings discussed changes in the state media after Donald Tusk’s government used legal mechanisms to remove senior figures from the public broadcaster Telewizja Polska S.A. The ministry also said it had swiftly withdrawn 37 SLAPP cases brought by the previous cabinet.
The government has been criticised for being slow to implement reforms and provide legal and financial certainty for the public broadcaster, which has been in a state of “liquidation” since the beginning of the year.
Press freedom in Greek court
MFRR expressed its full support to Greek journalist Stavroula Poulimeni and media outlet Alterthess ahead of their appeal hearing on 19 September. The hearing followed a court ruling. The judgement partially upheld a civil suit seeking damages for Poulimeni’s reporting on the conviction of two Hellas Gold executives for water pollution.
Alterthess was ordered to pay €3,000 to one of the executives in 2023 for reporting on his court conviction in October 2020. The judge ruled that although the sentence was publicly available information, the publication of his name was a breach of his privacy protected by GDPR rules and caused moral damage.
If the judgement stands, the future of judicial journalism and the public’s right of access to court decisions will be jeopardised. Moreover, the court’s ruling risks fuelling new SLAPP aimed at silencing media outlets in Greece, where journalists are already facing increasing legal harassment.
No data protection
Social media companies collect, share, and process vast amounts of information about their users without transparency or oversight, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report.
The document published on Thursday analyses how Meta Platforms, ByteDance’s TikTok, Amazon’s Twitch gaming platform, and other companies manage user data. The FTC concludes that data management and storage policies at many of them are “woefully inadequate.”
Media companies collected data through tracking technologies used in online advertising, by buying information from data brokers, and in other ways, FTC Chair Lina Khan stated.
While lucrative for the companies, these surveillance practices can endanger people’s privacy, threaten their freedoms, and expose them to a host of harms, from identity theft to stalking.
Data privacy, especially for children and teens, is a hot topic. The US House is considering bills passed by the Senate in July to address the impact of social media on young users. Meta recently released accounts for teens that include enhanced parental control features.
In addition to collecting data, most of the companies reviewed by the FTC collected users’ ages and genders or guessed them based on other information. Some also gathered information about users’ income, education, and marital status.
However, advertising industry groups criticised the report on Thursday. David Cohen, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an advertising and marketing group including Snapchat, TikTok and Amazon, said:
We are disappointed with the FTC’s continued characterisation of the digital advertising industry as engaged in ‘mass commercial surveillance.
Meta recently said it would ban Russian state media from using its apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads. The measure was taken after US prosecutors claimed that RT allegedly funded influence campaigns through social media.
