All across Europe publishers, editors and journalists are coming together to tell governments it is time to make the technology giants pay. Facebook and Google, should be obliged to support the journalism from which they profit but don't pay for.

In this blog, EJN Director of Campaigns and Communications, Tom Law, reflects on initiatives in the Czech Republic, Ireland, the UK, and across Europe to support the sustainability of quality journalism. 

Dear colleagues,

As some of you know the last few months have been a period of transition for the Ethical Journalism Network. Aidan White, who founded and built the EJN into an international force for the promotion of ethical journalism and good governance, has stepped down and now becomes our honorary President.

That means for the next year I have taken over his role as director to oversee the changes, which also include a new member of the team, Natalie Fitz-Gerald, as accountant and bookkeeper.

While these changes have been underway the EJN has gone from strength to strength with ten projects in place for 2018/19. Our biggest supporter is still the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (NMFA), which has done so much to support and build the EJN. At the heart of the 2018/19 NMFA programme are projects in China, Turkey and the Middle East.

• Thomas Kent writes that the most powerful false-news weapon in history is around the corner. The media industry has only a short time to get ahead of it. “Fake news is about to get so much more dangerous” 
• In the EJN President's Notebook, Aidan White writes that leading politicians in Britain are calling for a windfall tax levy on tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon in order to help fund more public interest journalism. In doing so some observers believe that they may have opened the door to ways of solving a crisis not just for cash-strapped news media, but perhaps also for democracy itself.
• Shahidul Alam – A courageous journalists who exemplifies why we must defend press freedom: Human rights campaigner Lyndall Stein calls for the release of journalist and photographer, Shahidul Alam, who has been held by Bangladeshi authorities since 5 August after he gave an interview to Al Jazeera about recent street protests. Stein, who has known Alam since the early 90’s, describes him as “a powerful courageous figure who exemplifies why we must defend freedom of the press.”

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