Ireland has backed another move towards preparing for threats against European democracy from disinformation campaigns, sabotage of critical infrastructure, and war.<\/p>\n
All but one of the 27 EU cultural ministers in Brussels have supported the approval of EU Council policy regarding access to \u201creliable news\u201d as part of its so-called European Democracy Shield.<\/p>\n
They included media minister Patrick O\u2019Donovan, who represented Ireland at the meeting.<\/p>\n
The shield initiative is part of the EU\u2019s package of measures to, among other things, integrate \u201cpreparedness and resilience\u201d into co-operation between member states and with organisations like Nato in the face of growing threats to the West from countries like Russia.<\/p>\n
Supporting independent media organisations, as well as public service news media, is part of a new EU-wide strategy being implemented as part of the EU\u2019s current review of security, defence and \u201cpreparedness\u201d to deal with a variety of threats.<\/p>\n
These include natural disasters like earthquakes, extreme weather events, industrial disasters, pandemics, hybrid threats like cyber attacks and armed aggression against member states.<\/p>\n
A EU statement said: \u201cMinisters approved a comprehensive framework for protecting and promoting European values and democratic resilience in the context of geopolitical challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn particular, they highlight the specific and essential role of culture and cultural diversity in fostering cohesion, a sense of community and civic engagement in European societies.\u201d<\/p>\n
It said the policies supported by 26 member states related to access to reliable news as part of the European Democracy Shield. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe shield includes measures to protect free and independent media as a pillar of democratic systems in the EU.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough access to reliable news is fundamental to a functioning democracy, factors such as geopolitical challenges, algorithm-driven content and the rise of influencers could potentially undermine trust in journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the Irish government published a strategy to counter disinformation and warned of the \u201cescalating threat false and misleading content poses to democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland has backed another move towards preparing for threats against European democracy from disinformation campaigns, sabotage of critical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1224,61,60,1634,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-172052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-disinformation","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-media","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}