Commission makes EUR 20.5 million available to support journalism, media pluralism and media literacy

The European Commission has published three calls for proposals under the Creative Europe programme to support professional journalism and media pluralism, strengthen media resilience and promote media literacy. The first call will fund journalism partnerships and promote media collaborations, as well as local and public-interest media, with a total of EUR 14 million. It has two thematic strands. "Pluralism" is for organisations that can set up and distribute funds to news media operating in sectors of particular relevance for democracy, such as local and public-interest media. "Collaboration" supports cross-border collaboration proposals between news media organisations, focused on innovative business models and journalism projects across Europe. In an additional call, EUR 3.5 million will go to cross-border media literacy projects, to help improve citizens' media literacy skills so they can navigate the information space with confidence and safety, and to build society's resilience against disinformation and foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). Another call, worth EUR 3 million, will support an independent, European-level rapid response mechanism to monitor violations of press and media freedom in the EU and in candidate countries. The monitoring will generate better data and insight on threats to media pluralism and the safety of journalists, and will feed into the annual Rule of Law report. The European Democracy Shield provides stronger financial support for independent and local journalism through the Media Resilience Programme, ensuring continuity between current media support and the funding programmes proposed in the new multiannual financial framework. The Commission has proposed increasing funding for the news media sector under the AgoraEU programme. All three calls open for applications on 22 October and are part of the EU's broader support for the news media sector.