Europolit's developer's blog
Developing the site 'europolit.net'Archive for funded journalism
The Concept Of ‘The Political’ (II)
As I pointed out in the previous post, we are not quite sure in what direction the project will be headed, what will be its nature. But one thing is for sure. It aims at bringing politics to the people. We want to do that by discussing important policies, that are pending to be worked on in the European Union. We are going to find authors who have a strong opinion, pro or contra, towards a certain policy. But who are the authors? They basically could be everyone. From the politicians, concerned with these policies, to lobbyists, NGO staff, scholars, bloggers, officials and journalists. Everyone who has an opinion about a certain topic. It will be our task to investigate, which individual this would be in each particular case. We want to create a pluralistic debate by having as many different views on a topic as possible.
I am going to try to explain this in an example: There is one event that gained attention, not only from bloggers and people living inside the Brussels bubble. It is the discussion about the SWIFT-Agreement. So, why do I have the idea, that SWIFT has been discussed largely? Well, mainly because it was covered largely by German news-agencies and because I am personally interested in this topic. Does that mean Germans get to know things, others do not? Well in this case I think it is like that. Let us check „google-News“: I have compared the media coverage of the term “SWIFT” in German, French, Spanish, Polish and British google news sites on Thursday night.
The lowermost bar represents the first result, and so on. What it actually shows is not that Germans are generally better informed than others (that would be even wrong here, because the Spanish seem to have a better coverage, which might be connected to the Spanish presidency), but that Germans seem to care about this special agreement. The British do not seem to care too much (correct me if I am wrong) and the French and Polish seem to be somewhat interested.
What speaks against the SWIFT-agreement is, as far as I know, that it violates privacy, because it gives the US-intelligence the possibility to check EU-citizens’ transnational bank transfers, which is not reciprocal. On the other hand what is brought as an argument for the agreement is, that it helps to identify terrorists. In Germany there is a general support I think, for the position of the EP, that means as expressed on Thursday in the LIBE-committee. But what do you others think about it?
I honestly do not know, what the French or British think about this agreement. I have friends in both countries, but I barely talk to them about politics, and if I do, then not about some technocratic agreement. Well and I think that this is wrong. I think it is important to know about the debates, it is important to get to know the arguments exchanged in other countries. That is why ‚The Political‘ is going to try to give an idea what is the content of their debates. We will need authors who can summarize the debate within their country. So we want to link to things: The debate inside the Brussels bubble and the debate in the European countries.
But, how will we be able to organize that? As for now we are planning on founding an association, which will finance the expenses, the work of the editorial staff and probably the authors too. The association itself will be financed through funding and donations. We are actively watching the model of ‘funding journalism’, as for example at ProPublica. Our understanding of a public is, that there should not be any obstacles for people, who want to inform themselves. That is, why we do not want to create a model which includes or is financed by means of ‘paid-content’. Since we are based in Germany, we decided, after consulting with a legal practitioner, that establishing a society would be the best solution to meet our needs. Apart from that, this society would shift the focal point away from the single individual to the higher purpose of ‚The Political‘.
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