Good afternoon everyone and a very warm welcome
to the presentation of the report of the Media Freedom Rapid Response mission on the
Safety of Journalists here in The Netherlands. This press conference will be done in english
because the mission was conducted by an international coalition and we also have
an international audience mainly online. media freedom rapid response is a consortium of
six european media and press freedom organizations i will all name them so we start with the european
center for press and media freedom the european feder federation of journalists article 19
international press institute the osafertorio balcony et cocozo trans europa italian
italian and free press unlimited the media freedom rapid response is funded by the
european commission and its objective is to give legal and practical support to journalists in the
member countries and candidate countries of the union the consortium monitors press freedom in
these countries and undertakes also advocacy to strive for more and better press
freedom and the safety of journalists the mfr already conducted several missions
in other countries so the netherlands is not the first other countries where
the mission was taking place was poland slovenia hungary italy and serbia
so now you might ask why the netherlands because the netherlands of course has
a very good reputation when it comes to the safety of journalists it is known
as a front fighter for press freedom and internationally it stands
for a safe haven for journalists and a well-known new initiative called peschweiler
which is actually an agreement between the dutch association of journalists the dutch social
society of editors in chief and on the other side the police and the public prosecution
has also a very good name internationally so why then a mission here in the netherlands because sadly despite being a front fighter for
press freedom here in the netherlands we also face increasingly violations and a hostile climate
against journalists we all remember the decision of the dutch public broadcaster to remove the
logos from their transportation vehicles right to actually protect their employees and
of course we remember the horrible murder on the dutch crime journalist peter alfrese on
broad daylight but we also see an increasingly violation against journalists during
demonstrations even peaceful demonstrations pearsweller also monitors a lot of these
alerts and in 2021 they filed 270 alerts intimidation violation harassment all against
journalists that number was in 2020 only 121 so there's a steep increase and the
question is of course why why is the safety of journalists here in the netherlands
declining in practice because on paper we have such a strong safety mechanism like
pearce failure to find that answer that was the reason why we free present limited initiated
this fact-finding mission in the netherlands we did that in a very close consultation
with the dutch association of journalists and as soon as we announced this we got a lot
of reactions there's a huge interest for this for this particular mission we interviewed
a wide range of stakeholders varying from of course journalists and editors in chiefs but also
policymakers a member of parliament and of course the coordinator of persvela and the results of the
investigation are to be found in this report which will be presented in just a couple of minutes
and the report is named spotlight on safety advancing protection for journalists amidst
rising threats here in the netherlands the report the main results of the report
will be presented by laurence hutting from the european center of press and media freedom
and christian of three person limited and after their presentation there will be two panels who
will go into the recommendations of the report one will look into the prevention and strategies
with a specific gender lens and the other panel will go into the protection of journalists i
hope that you have a very interesting afternoon and i wish you all the best and laurence
can i give you the floor thank you very much thank you ritz um and thank you all for being
here to start with a real thank you because i think the fact that we are here today with
such a wide range of actors ranging from the policy makers politicians to of course the
journalistic community editors in chief but also law enforcement and academic experts is really
something that should not be taken for granted especially when looking at what is happening
in russia today for instance where journalists are increa like of course there's there is
no journalism left um a meeting that we are having today would be absolutely impossible and
that's an understatement i think so to start with uh thank you for showing up today and to for um
showing your support for the safety of journalists in the netherlands in this regard i think
the netherlands is clearly a very safe haven for journalists that being said let us now
zoom into um the the safety of journalists in the netherlands so at the center of um the dutch
policy regarding safety of journalists is perfect or in english press safe i think for the
audience here in the room this is already quite known but we also have an international
audience online so just to briefly explain perspective is a safety mechanism
including several protocols national action plans and guidelines and it was
established in 2019 by the national police as it said the dutch journalists union the association
of editors in chief and the public prosecution office and it is co-funded by several ministries
of the dutch government so in that regard perspective is a very unique safety mechanism
that's also internationally often praised so to begin with in our report what we found
is that the symbolic value of perspective is very high so an example is the perspire hotline
where journalists who are faced with harassment intimidation violence and other forms of press
freedom violations can file a report and this gives a very clear signal to society that no
press freedom violation violation should ever be accepted in the netherlands and also that
this is not part of the job of journalists but this hotline also means that
data are collected at a central point and that press freedom violations in the
netherlands are now being monitored consistently so this has shown an increase in the past year for
instance um of threats against journalists and we see that this has clearly led to more awareness on
the policy level and in that sense we conclude in our report that perspire has really strengthened
the voice of journalists towards the authorities but of course perfect also leads to more practical
improvements of safety of journalists on the ground so in the mission in the meetings that we
had as part of the mission what came forward very often was the example of the safety trainings that
are offered by perspective so these are basically trainings offered to reporters journalists but
also photographers and also offered to freelancers for free to basically prepare them for the
potential violence that they may face while reporting for instance on demonstrations so it
is a way to make them more resilient and to teach them coping strategies and this in our mission
really came forward as one of the um well it's very appreciate very much appreciated by the
journalistic community and also serves as an example for other um countries we think but at the
same time we're of course not here today just to praise pearce fail but we also need to zoom out a
bit and look at room for improvement of course in the dutch generally in the dutch policy regarding
safety of journalists and we're also here today to provide some recommendations um and despite the
perspective efforts we cannot ignore the fact that ezra also said threats and aggression against
journalists are and remain on the rise in the netherlands so this in fact has led us to believe
that prosecuting the aggressors of journalists and at the same time improving coping strategies
of journalists to deal with harassment that they face is just simply not enough so to remain an
international pioneer the netherlands really need to do more about preventing these threats against
journalists and the netherlands need to do more in order to address the root causes underlying
such threats and such aggression so first is will we think require more investigation more research
into the motives that people hold like why do people harass journalists why do people think it
is okay to um to throw to throw eggs at reporters at demonstrations what are the underlying
root causes and i think following from that policy is needed to improve the position of
journalists in the dutch society and to really strengthen their role and also the perception
of the role of journalists as a fourth pillar in our democracy so in that's why we recommend to
the dutch authorities in particular the ministry of education culture and justice to explore this
option further and we hope that today the first panel of today will be a first um exploration
of that recommendation but first lawrence will share a bit more thanks khushi so i'll address uh
four further key action points that came out of our fact-finding they are uh firstly about gender
secondly the need for uh advancing tailor-made protection options uh to tackle threats uh
coming from organized crime the third one is about policing protests and lastly also the need
to preserve and expand the capacity of pexfelish so the first action point concerns the need
for specific policies that will improve the safety of women journalists throughout the
mission we heard the from our interlocutors that women journalists face specific types
of threats and are also more frequently subjected to attacks in specific contexts
online context being an important one here the netherlands in other words is no exception
to european and global trends in in this regard at the same time establishing the scope and the
intensity of the problem here in the netherlands proved proof challenging as there is currently
no systematic systemic monitoring mechanism that tracks this gendered and gender-based violence and
harassment we're concerned about this blind spot first because there is a blind spot and that
that's a problem in se but also because of the impact or the implication that having this
blind spot has in on the development of policies creating solutions that work after all really
requires a precise understanding of the problem and so that's why one of our recommendations is
that monitoring of attacks and harassment of women journalists specifically should be strengthened
one possible solution could be to integrate this into pex felix alert mechanism which at the
moment does not collect data about the gender of the affected journalist the second action point
concerns the need to accelerate the development of tailor-made protection for journalists
who face threats coming from organized crime we heard during the mission that the threat
from the underworld must be taken more seriously and that the current approach is too naive the
word kindergarten or childish came up repeatedly during during our interviews at the same time
it's clear that not all journalists who face the same or similar threats um either require
or want the same format and the same type of protection um so there needs to be a move away
from a cookie cutter approach into something that is tailored and fits each journalist's individual
situation in any case whatever the shape that this protection then takes it must allow a reporter to
continue working which especially for for crime journalists a key point here is the protection of
their sources as they are in contact with people who may not be too keen on that meeting being
joined by a police officer as well for example thirdly i wanted to briefly address the
interaction between reporters and police during protests many journalists told us that in recent
years tension has increased this is despite a very high willingness for cooperation between the
various actors but nevertheless there remains a need to ensure a better understanding of the role
of the press during demonstrations at the moment our understanding is that a lack of capacity seems
to be part of the explanation of the problem this increased understanding then should also translate
into changes to operational procedures with a view to minimizing interference and obstruction of
reporting during during demonstrations this all to include among other things um improvement of the
practice around the recognition of the press card lastly the the final action point i wanted
to raise before handing it over to to our panelists is the capacity of beijing with this
mechanism the netherlands has really created a rare gem of best practice if you look at
the european context and so now it's important to keep this european leadership as fuchs also
mentioned so with that in mind the media freedom rapid response recommends further investment
in in this mechanism and in its resources this should include the full financing
of the mechanism in the post-subsidy era and also an expansion of its human capital its
human resources so that the mechanism can respond on the one hand to the the increase in
threats that are currently within its scope but also can broaden that scope to include
for example a gender lens or to invest more in prevention um i'll keep it at this
and hand it over to our moderator hi everyone good afternoon um so it is now
time to uh dive a little deeper into some of the recommendations that we just heard um
and we will do that through two panels as ruth briefly mentioned um the first panel
will focus on prevention strategies of women journalists and the second panel will focus on the
safety of journalists during demonstrations and in the context of organized crime my name is flores
schultz north and i will be moderating both panels um i'd like to invite the first
panel up on stage ingrid and rowan while you're walking up i will briefly
introduce who i have with with me here on stage introducing each other rohan blight program maker
for cairo ncrv and founder of the glow up welcome um and england michonne dutch member of parliament
of the v day party and spokesperson on justice and security we had a third panelist who unfortunately
was sick today from the ministry of education but i'm certain that we will have enough
valuable insights with these two panelists today um so welcome i have some questions for
us to start off the discussion and after that at the end of this panel there will be room for
questions from the audience uh so i'd like to ask you to save your questions till the end please
uh and for those watching uh through livestream you can post your questions in the chat and
we will um get to those at the end as well uh rowan let's start with you uh
one of the findings from the report is that women journalists in the netherlands
face more online more threats and violence than their male colleagues especially online you are a
female journalist do you agree is this something that you experience as well um i wholeheartedly
agree the thing is that it always was a feeling or i heard my other female colleagues talk about
it talk about the threats that they receive um but i um i'm glad that we're now getting to the
step that we are going to collect data to back that feeling up so i wholeheartedly
agree that we as female journalists have a very hard time doing our jobs because
we get critiqued for not only doing our jobs but also for who we are or where we are from so
it's um it gets very personal very easily yeah yeah i can understand that uh that you that it's
good to know you didn't just imagine it yeah um what are the i'm just gonna have one follow-up
question for you what are the effects of this violence in your work do you self-censor for
example or how do you how does it affect your day-to-day work um for me for example i um back
in 2017 have received a lot of threats for um something very like i thought it was very fun and
light light-hearted um but for me personally when i received those threats and all those messages
um i really uh thought about the possibility of possibly leaving this job and do something
else or not be on the forefront as much or not tell the stories that i'm uh used to tell um
so that's that was it for me that's a huge effect for a journalist of course um ingrid a question
for you so next to specific recommendations on safety of women journalists prevention was also a
big theme in the report that needed improvement in the netherlands and we know that the fever day
puts a quite strong emphasis on prosecution and stronger punishment what is the vision of the
veda in terms of prevention yeah well i uh thank you and thank you for having me here it's a
very interesting afternoon and a good initiative and i think that prevention and the pres the
prosecution has to be is both sides on one metal so you can't only focus on prevention without
sort of keeping the door closed so we did a lot of initiatives like there's one initiative called
doxing that's a new law which which tries to sort of copes with threatening on the internet so
like if you example see your name or you see your your address it can be very threatening to put
it online but of course prevention in my point of view is starts with sort of drawing the line even
in parliament where i am if you see my colleagues talking about mainstream media or
their sort of encouraging people who who are not dealing with the law we got here
and i think it's very important as a member of parliament that you stand up and you you speak
speak out for our journalists and that's what we do as a favorite day yeah um yeah drawing the line
and and pinpointing what it is that we're dealing with is super important of course do you link that
to some sort of education uh programs in terms of prevention well for me journalism is is a
very important uh pillar on the whole the whole house we built in holland on our democracy
and a rule of law so in that way yes of course it is education we got like uh it's very
important to uh sort of yeah sort of um be careful with the institutions we have and
i think journalism is a very important sort of institution in the whole house of democracy in
the whole house of rule of law that we got here in this country and yeah in that way it's of
course it starts with education yes definitely and uh just to stay with you for one follow-up
question uh specifically because we're talking about women journalists here um do you have
uh policy or policy ideas to better protect women journalists specifically actually no no
that's i heard this uh uh today in this report and it's very important to set the agenda and i
to hear it from you and as a female politician i think um yeah we i think we got some uh
same experiences um so i think it's very very important to set the agenda and to see
what's especially needed for female journalists i i even think that there are not so so many female
journalists are there oh well no there are lots of female journalists a women journalist yes yes
there are and um that's why i also think that in that respect that we really need to monitor
the data and we really need to um um count and not count the women out because that's what
uh what we've been doing for a long time um and also not count their experiences out as well
yeah yeah that's definitely true and i think now that there's so much attention on like being a
woman and the gender-based aspect of violence as you say politicians and journalists are quite
close to each other they're both in the spotlight both quite vulnerable um so it's it's yeah it's
good to address that group um as such um rowan you are hearing just now in the recommendations
by christian lawrence and right now in this conversation quite some recommendations
and ideas about you and your work um hearing this do you think this will help or um yes of course no no i really do think um um
the four points that were already made do help um and i do hope that um we can stick to it and
that it will we can keep it top of mind as well and my thing really is to uh to monitor the data
to have some data to have something to grasp uh to inform policies to inform inform research
further research i mean um so i hope i agree with what has already been said yeah a lack of data
is uh is of course a huge issue so it's good that that's a recommendation um in the report um ingrid
to ask you a follow-up question um what do you think is the responsibility of other stakeholders
so we're talking about journalists here um but as you said you have the doxing law um and platforms
are involved there newsrooms are involved they probably have a duty of care for their journalists
where does the responsibility lie towards other stakeholders do you feel like like others other
stuff so other so the platforms um what do you feel that platforms for example should uh okay do
you feel they have a responsibility in this regard well i think it's i think it's a common
responsibility because we this problem is is much bigger than you can cope alone on this
journalist uh the community of journalists cannot scope cannot do it alone so i think
it's that's why perspire they stood up that's why uh members of parliaments and
also of course the ministries they sort of want to cooperate with pearce failure and they
want to uh yeah they want they want to fund it and i think uh that's a very good initiative
because then there you see uh problems in a hall so not like like divided but the whole problem uh
and i think it's very important that uh perfect that's one one of the action uh as well
that person will continue and and uh will maybe increase also their um their um attention
for example for female journalism because that's the beginning of the discussion and the discussion
then starts not only in parliament but also just in society and on the ministries like what do
we think is normal what is needed to protect our journalists and that can be like as a
member of parliament it's always about well sort of measures to protect them for example
the funding we do it with perspective funding so every student is who has not an employer
can can follow courses or they can have a red button to protect themselves
so that's like small measures to make their work in a safer environment but
it's like so much more so i think it's very important to um to cooperate and to do it
together with every stakeholder because i think in society and in parliament and on the
ministries everybody agrees that we have to be very careful and we have to stand up for
our journalists so in that way there's not much uh difference of understanding yeah no i i i
hear you and we need a multi-stakeholder approach that's what i'm hearing in your answer definitely
um i'm seeing some questions coming through the chat which is a nice bridge for a question to
you rowan um journalism journalists themselves of course are also stakeholder here so what do you
think is the role of journalism or a journalist itself to protect specifically women journalists
in this case it's uh they have a very big role to have this infrastructure or a safety net
available for their own journalists that might have some harassment issues issues
coming towards them for example when i faced my sort of harassments back in uh back in
2017.
It was very hard for me to um find uh the right path within the company to see who
could help me who could support me um the main reaction that i got from colleagues was it's part
of the job that's just that's just what happens um and that wasn't enough for me so what
happened afterwards for me was that i joined the uh association of journalists um so that was
what i did but i think that uh the the the public broadcasting system that we have um that there are
lots of steps available for example um in other countries all uh there they also have examples
ready um for what you can do to support your journalists i think a safety net in the
form of even asking how are you how is this affecting you that's a small step that you
could even undertake but there are lots of other things that um they can do and i think it's very
important to realize as a broadcaster for example i'm using my own example um to realize the role
that you have in supporting your own journalists and i i hope that um with everything that's
uh happening right now that the realization um is is is there right now that's what i hope yeah
yeah so this attitude of it's part of the job yeah of course a deeper rooted um issue it's a more
systemic issue that we need a culture change in some way to view positions of journalists just
one follow-up question about this network that you're talking about do you feel um supported
enough by existing networks or do you feel that there really is an area of improvement there
uh for a whole new network to be set up um i think there is room for um um uh how do you say that
for um an extra network you could say i think our approach has been very broad in the netherlands
it has been very um we can help journalists as a whole but um as we already heard before we really
need some gender-based studies and a gender-based approach for women a journalist in this example
because they get a different type of threats than male journalists get so i really think that if
i think of my own examples if i think of the friends i have that work in journalism the
approach that we need is um very different towards us than towards men and yeah i think
um there's a whole lot of work to do in that aspect yeah recognizing these attacks
as gender-based there's a huge gender component because the attacks are often same as
politicians sexual um misogynistic and it really needs to be um recognized as such uh did you want
to respond just now after that i'm gonna look to the audience if there are any questions uh left i
think i think it's of course it's important to um uh to to tell about it in your own company and you
have your your boss you have an employer but there are a lot of journalists freelancers and they
are on their own so i think for that specific group than perspective but also like every every
police every region police region got his own single point of contact especially for journalists
who are threatened who are dealing with harassment so i think yeah even for the freelance journalism
they can feel more sort of in isolation and more alone even uh people working in in
in an um yeah in an uh yeah company yeah public closed caster definitely yeah this group of
freelancers as extra vulnerable to these attacks um i'm looking at the time and looking into
the audience are there any questions here from this group no um then i think in terms of
time it goes very fast uh we're going to need to round off unless one of you has a last remark to
uh i think one last thing that i really want to point out is that um for in gender-based violence
in politics in media in whatever i think it's also very important in legislation legislation i mean
that the correct training is available as well for officers for lawyers for example because
what we see in gender-based violence and as a whole is that it's very hard sometimes for
women to step up and to say what's happening um so i would also suggest looking at that yes
strong point to end this panel with i think thank you both so much for uh joining us
today here um thank you and i'd like to invite the second panel up but perhaps first a
round of applause for this uh panel thank you the second panel um while you walk up here i will
introduce you um so in the second panel we will focus on another major theme in the report um the
safety of journalists during demonstrations and in the context of organized crime and with us here
today we have starting on my right your left uh paul fix investigative crime journalist for parole
we have thomas bruning general secretary from the dutch association of journalists and we have bae
de may head of operations at the dutch police welcome thank you for being here uh paul i'll
start with you um so the murder of peter de frisc sparked a nationwide discussion on the safety
of journalists and more specifically on personal protection of journalists and one of the
recommendations in the report was this tailor-made personal protection and given your experience with
personal protection uh what is your view on this because the protection being tailor-made is is the
most important uh the whole complex of protection i've been they planned to kill me in 2017 and i've
been in the best protection we have in holland the the royal diplomatic security service
dean's colleague look at the valking that's top of the bill so i've we lived
in a safe house my girlfriend and i and i was with them and they protected me all uh
to all the places at all the place where we went but if it's if you get one step lower or aside
whether whatever you would call it it's got to be more critical because if you my
tailor-made package was 100 percent the way i wanted to have it because uh my
uh the person uh i i dealt with i spoke with always the same person we were
uh absolutely um we shared those uh and uh that is a big issue in some other parts
of uh the netherlands and it's a big issue that uh um as the higher you you get into uh uh to the
hague um the the distance is is uh um too wide it's too long you need you need someone uh really
close to you uh so i live in amsterdam i i really needed someone in amsterdam uh who i could talk
to who i can go to where i can meet whenever i want and once i need to go from amsterdam
to the hague uh to for example ncfa the contra terror organization who gets involved
that this is too long you you are not on speaking terms with the same persons uh the whole day the
whole week and that's very important so sorry just to clarify for those who are not very into this
matter um you you mean the higher in the hague uh so the higher up in hierarchy for example at
the nctv yes and you had good personal protection because of the proximity short distance yeah
proximity okay and why did you get this personal protection and uh what made your case special
one specific crime group uh wants to kill me uh and it was the the information was very specific
um and if i uh wouldn't have been in protection i wouldn't have lived uh so yeah that was very
specific uh my colleague silva hovel working for the telegraph as everybody does he's in
the same kind of protection from uh december 2017 up until now we have lawyers in the same
kind of protection unfortunately and we have uh and judges being secured that way so that's
the new reality we need to face and i don't want anybody to say it's not dutch way it's the
dutch threat it's a threat for us in holland as well it's not italy it's us yeah it's it's
the reality uh it's our reality um one quick follow-up question before i move on to uh the next
paladin panelist um personal protection of course uh requires a careful balance between journalistic
freedoms on the one hand and safety on the other hand um which is always kind of the clash right
so how do you think this balance is best protected in my personal story it was the only
group i could not meet uh easily was the criminals themselves because the security
service wouldn't bring me to them because but i needed a call probably but i still need
them as sources i need to to be able to speak to everybody so that that was yeah that we had
worked to i was the first journalist in holland uh in this protective program so we were pioneers
in uh and we found out i can't tell how but we we we finally finally found a way to do it but
um in general um the um royal and diplomatic security service made it possible for me to
meet whoever i want to meet you have the privacy you have no your agenda needs to be on their
side four days before so you have no um it's it's not an easy way of living but they made
me uh they made it possible for me to do my job good yeah so um it seems really seems there is an
added value uh to this tailor-made uh protection as you say it's crucial yeah yeah um thank you
uh thomas i have a question for you um perspire of which you are on the steering committee um is
the mechanism in the netherlands when it comes to the safety of journalists and the demand is high
at the same time the ministry has uh announced that it will stop its funding per 2024 if i'm
correct uh so a more general question um for you what does the future of perspective look like
where do you see pierce felix in five years well i'm happy with this meeting and i'm
also happy with the well this sort of positive european audit of what we're doing with
pierce failure until now and but to be honest the fact the point you're making is giving us some
sort of worry because as we experience until now it's crucial at one hand that the sector itself
the media companies the public broadcaster and the commercial broadcasters are uh are joining
uh forces also in a financial we're giving financial means to support perspective but
we also experience that it's really necessary to have a public support as well and
what we emphasized the last few years and happily the the members of parliament and the
ministers uh supported this as well is we said if you want to do a project like this you need a sort
of structural base otherwise it becomes a project and you have to send away the people involved
with it after three years or two years and you get this whole system again and
our experiences with other types of uh well let's say things that the media party
should do together like the ethical council has given us reason to not only be
positive about the support the serious financial support from the from the sector
itself so until now i especially the public broadcasters showed that they want
to invest but it's also a little bit uh due to the fact that one of the other
members of the steering committee of in the room here and who has good connections
to the to the public broadcaster but we experienced for instance that the the the media
companies uh let's say more the publishing side have showed some uh uh you well we had to convince
them really about this project and i think we need to sort of join forces to to continue this project
because it won't go away from itself yeah so uh yeah so you can rely on some sort of support
from the sector itself that's good to hear um and we can expect perspective to not vanish in five
years if all goes well um i do have a question so you you're talking about this financial support
from the sector um from the sector itself do you think and this is a question that also came
in by the way uh do you think there is a role or responsibility for journalists themselves
in terms of their own in terms of their own safety and if so what do you think that is well
definitely and one of the things i thought would could also be a recommendation would be the the
this let's say unstable position of freelance journalist here in holland here because i think
and i've said it here in the parliament as well in earlier meetings that i uh that to be a
professional journalist you have to have the means also yourself to protect yourself and what
one of the outcomes what we see and i think it was mentioned in the report as well is that for
instance photojournalists or freelance journalists they although they get offered these trainings for
free and these trainings usually would cost five six hundred euros a day they still would uh cancel
in the last moment because they say okay we can earn 300 euros today so we won't do it because
we need the money and this is only one example and one of the others is of course that
that usually freelancers aren't able to hire a special place to work so they're working
from out of their house with me which makes them also more vulnerable and and the same
goes for let's say the bulletproof vest or or other sources of protection it's quite worrisome
if you have to think about these things yeah and at the same time being a professional
and and unless last week we were in in another uh we were at the court because and and
we also mentioned this problem because for instance photo photographers they work not on
an hourly base for media companies but they work on the basis of giving giving them for a profoto
they get paid for photo but if you go to some dense demonstration or some you know places
where you in fact you have to invest first you know to be safe you have to place your car
uh not directly on the demonstration you have to it would be much more better not to bring your
camera directly you know so you can connect with the people and see how your position is but if
you get paid by photo it's not easy to make this decision because you have to do it in your own
time so yeah thank you thank you i'm hearing i'm hearing this these struggles or these issues
around freelance journalists but i want to ask you a question but i want to give paul one chance
to react uh to the freelance issue if you like i've been uh stressed in this point uh for
for years now uh because um i work for a big publishing company uh so uh from my cars were were
paid uh very well with without hesitate but uh my work colleagues who work freelance they sometimes
need to think twice or uh or longer if they are gonna put one or another story out because with
the risk of being harassed or even killed or accused in court and need to pay a lawyer and
this chilling effect is a big big danger to the freedom of press yeah yeah this uh it
is a vulnerable group what we heard in the first panel and now uh it's reiterated again
um to uh include you in the conversation now um one of the recommendations in the report is
uh that there's more need for police capacity and what do you think is needed to
better implement the perspective protocol within the police yeah every problem
in the world the answer is more police so but i i think we're always short on budget
and policemen of course but i think it's a very serious problem that we have here on our hands
and i think the report and also this conversation uh that realized the police that we have to
do more than than we do now i think peshwa is a very good start because we all in in this room
realize uh and we experience all uh these attacks uh it's it's indeed uh a fact of life now there's
science uh members of parliament journalists and also policemen they are attacked in their work and
it's not acceptable so i think the most important statement that we have to make here is uh society
should not accept this and of course we are as a police the last resort but we are not a solution
to every problem and i think in paschfield there is an understanding that journalists first
have to protect themselves the companies are responsible and there is a last resort and that's
the police and i think it's very important as as as a nation a democratic nation that we
support journalists to do their work i think it's very important and for that case we
not only more police capacity but we have to give priority to this matter so we cannot do
investigation do all the crimes that there are but this is a specific group and we have to give
priority so i think that is important yeah no i hear you and i agree um i do hear the need for
prevention measures as well in your answer um just to zoom in on one more practical um uh approach
which we were just discussing is tailor-made protection from a police point of view um do you
expect to put this in practice more um is that feasible this recommendation from the uh from the
report yeah i think it's good to uh to talk about it and we have this uh a single point of contact
in every region my colleague bim honaut is also here and he talk uh on the frequently based with
the journalists so what do you experiences what are the specific problems and i think uh in the
one region it's it's another case because uh paul um yeah he's on the top level of threatening
but we're happy that in the netherlands luckily most journalists don't experience that kind
of threat so it's important not only that single point of contact in the network but it's
also important that when you call the police one you feel protected or
yeah that every policeman will act not only one person in the region but
every policeman when you call the police they act on a good way and they give priority do you do
you feel there's an urgency within the police to uh that understands the role of journalists in
society do you feel there's enough understanding in the police to uh i think it can be
better it's growing but it can be better okay okay thank you i agree on that there are
still police stations where it's hard to uh yeah to tell your story yeah
not my story because that's not a spectrum but the story of uh colleagues
a colleague being harassed uh online and uh uh trying to discuss it and being sent away then
of course we call percever and uh and we'll we'll find our way yeah but it should be more uh in the
roots of the police yeah do you feel perspective is is a a platform where there which is serves as
the basis for this dialogue or do you feel that there needs to be more invested in strengthening
this dialogue between journalists and the police i think better i'm looking at any of you too is
a good brand so we have to uh to keep that up not only for a few years years as a project but
on long term so that's important but we have 65 000 policemen so we have to do more about the
awareness that journalists are threatened yeah yeah but i think that the person can
be a good basis for for having these uh contacts that these and when it be because what
you're explaining of course they're not gonna and i can understand it i mean when you have 60 000
people working at the at the organization you can't expect them all to be informed in the right
way and that's the reason that these single points of contact are so important so you can directly
go to the the better level to address the case when something goes wrong and what we saw last
year is also because we have to with the steering committee we are well every three minutes three
months or something we're checking on the on the also on the data what we get in uh as as
problems and also the the reports at the police and what we saw last year which is good is that
there were almost as much reports at the police as there were at perfect which means that the the
police found have placed it in the right basket yeah so they recognize it as journalists going
to uh to the police station so this is one of the things that comes out that is positive
well i mean yeah it underlines that that perspective of course is a best practice in
the international context for a good reason um it's good we have the space in the
netherlands uh looking at the time i'm gonna look into the audience
if there are any questions here no i see one coming in online which is
a follow-up question to all of you um the netherlands serves as a good practice when
advising other states on their measures to improve the safety of journalists what recommend what
recommendation would you give based on perspective so the way i hear that question is if other
countries want to implement perspective yeah yeah well what i did because we have also we're in good
good contact with our european affiliates and and also for instance belgium was so inspired by what
we're doing right here that they'll already uh made the step to to put perfectly dot
be online so so there's just starting it but what i advised them was you first have to
start with a good research among the journalists themselves because what we did so for several
years and every six years or something we went to our members and we said we checked on them but the
the the big difference was uh when breneckmeyer and other character in back in 2019 really did a
good research and then it was really put high on the agenda also politically so so i think if you
want to start somewhere you really have to have a real good research because you also make clear
to your to them to the journalists themselves that they as rowan said before that you should not
take it for granted or something but you should uh speak out about it and then you should
do something about it and you should involve your editors-in-chief and your the
management in this so i think training research and getting the the the the
managers involved is very important alongside with the police and yeah good thing
i think awareness is crucial uh awareness and the horrible fact that uh peter edwards has
been killed last summer uh the horrible fact that uh marty [ __ ] crime blogger has been killed and
the lawyer of crown witness and the brother of the crown witness and the newsrooms of the telegraph
and panorama have been attacked those horrible facts make make sure that for one to three
months it's on top of everybody's minds and then it fades away yeah and that's uh that should not
happen and if i may stay make one more statement the courtrooms the extra secured courtrooms are
uh very well protected but not for journalists outside and not for lawyers of uh lawyers who need
to go there um and we tried to stress this for a long time and now we we got 10 email addresses
of the 10 courts if we have any questions we can email that's not the solution for this no and is
i'm going to look at is that something you want to uh react to um this need for this it's not the
problem please no that's a introduction yeah that's my statement uh the first thing
is that uh hands off uh the journalists we must uh uh influence the public opinion you
don't uh attack journalists and then comes uh the police yeah at the end and the populist
politicians should stop poisoning the debate uh yeah the atmosphere this is of course the
need what's in the report as well about this uh prevention and this need for a culture shift
to recognize the role of journalists in society um i have one last question um and then i think
we have to round off because i'm not seeing any hands in the uh in the audience um we've spoken
about different measures to protect journalists but what is the first priority now to improve
the safety of journalists according to prime crime reporters journalists unions and the police
perspective so everyone their own perspective uh basically what's the first priority
in terms of protecting journalists at the moment tailor-made um okay discussions
yeah tailor-made yeah i think solutions yeah yeah i think at the moment where we are right
now i think we have to look at the prevention and and we're looking for it at the
report that was promised already for this spring by the way they say and uh in your
report i read that it's being postponed to next year or something it's quite worrisome that
because we also have to look at what can we do with prevention what can we what is the intention
of people who are attacking journalists and what can we do ourselves so i i hope there's somebody
from the ministry of of justice here present and we want to emphasize that this the this research
should be available earlier than next year yeah thank you and pay it last remark yeah for me
uh uh aside of what has been said i think the network building that's important so that we know
each other and we can frequently talk about the experiences yeah good thank you with these last
three concrete uh recommendations i think that's a good endnote for this panel um i'd like to thank
you all very much for joining us here today and everyone here in the room as well thank you for
being here um if there are no further questions i i would like to round off and invite everyone
for a drink at the bar after this thank you you