European Union: Press freedom and the EU elections - by Christophe Deloire

Almost one person in two in the world does not have access to freely reported news and information.

As Europeans, we can count ourselves lucky that we enjoy "this freedom that allows us to verify respect for all the other freedoms".

In the World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), our continent is by far the one where freedom of the press is the most widely observed.
But let us not turn a blind eye on the fact that, in recent years, a dam has burst and this cornerstone of our democracy has been seriously damaged.

The murder of the Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul made us aware of the sometimes-horrifying violence inflicted by some countries on journalists.

However, Europe is not immune.

In Malta, Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered because of her investigations into a money laundering scam.

In Slovakia, Jan Kuciak was killed because he was investigating a large-scale tax evasion scheme. These murders are among the most serious attacks on press freedom. They are also the symptom of a deep-rooted problem.

Journalism in Europe has been weakened by relentless, and often hyped-up, anti-media rhetoric by some political leaders, either in power or hoping to get there.

Coverage of the 'yellow vest' protests in France has provoked a profound dislike of journalists, sometimes going as far as rape threats directed at reporters.

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has used similar distrust to his advantage when he recites the "fake news" argument to justify his refusal to speak to media outlets that do not support his own party.

We cannot resign ourselves to this situation.

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Turkey: How to circumvent Turkey’s social media block

Access to several social media sites was blocked for over an hour in Turkey today during a reported military coup. Although internet traffic appears to be flowing normally again, Turkey’s government frequently responds to political events by blocking certain websites or throttling traffic. 

“We saw the throttling of connections from Turkey to Twitter and Facebook just after the reports of the coup in Turkey,” Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Dyn Research, told TechCrunch. “We did not see any problems with YouTube, but I have also seen others report problems accessing that website.” Livestreaming services like Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook Live appeared unaffected by the block. 

Overall, internet traffic in Turkey may have dropped by half, according to CloudFlare data. CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince tweeted, “From CloudFlare data, appears there’s about a 50% drop in Internet traffic coming out of Turkey.”

Turkish censorship of social media has been relatively easy to circumvent in the past — users could use DNS services like Google Public DNS to evade the blocks. But Turkey has become more sophisticated in how it blocks its citizens from accessing social media, according to Madory.

“This time Turkey appears to be restricting bandwidth when accessing social media. This represents a more sophisticated censorship technique that is harder to detect,” Madory said. “Users should still be able to circumvent it using a VPN, but the average user in Turkey may still not have that technology readily available.”

Click on the link below for the completer report and techniques for getting around internet blocks during times of turmoil:

Read more: How to circumvent Turkey’s social media block | TechCrunch