online creators can attend EU summits and ministerial meetings<\/a> to make videos for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Fine. But the guidance to member states includes one odd instruction: don\u2019t pick anyone who has \u201cpublished views against EU values.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat are EU values? Nobody will say. That\u2019s the useful thing about a vague rule. You can point it wherever you like and never have to justify it. Posted something awkward about migration?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wondered whether the euro was a good idea? Suggested the Commission gets things wrong? Possibly against EU values, possibly not, depending on who\u2019s reading your back catalog that morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no list of banned opinions or a review. An official just looks through your old posts and makes a call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now imagine them trying this on actual journalists. Guidance that said: nominate reporters to cover the summit, but exclude any who\u2019ve expressed views against EU values. The newspapers would lose their minds, and Brussels knows it, which is exactly why it would never write that sentence down for the press corps. Journalists come with a long tradition of being a nuisance to power, and a fair number of lawyers to back it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Creators don\u2019t have that armor. There\u2019s no press freedom group ready to defend some bloke with 200,000 followers who makes explainer videos about the Council. So the EU runs an opinion test, files it under \u201celigibility criteria,\u201d and assumes nobody will notice it\u2019s the same thing it would never ask of a reporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They\u2019re doing the same job, though. A creator explaining a Brussels decision to teenagers who\u2019ll never buy a newspaper is doing journalism, whether or not anyone hands him a badge. Plenty of them reach more people than the wire reporters in the room. The only real difference is that one group has institutional defenders and the other has a phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leaves the EU with an awkward question. Is a free press one of these \u201cvalues\u201d or not? If it is, the rule contradicts itself, because the whole point of a free press is being able to publish views against you. You can\u2019t vet your reporters for loyalty and call it press freedom in the same breath. And if a free press isn\u2019t on the list, then they\u2019ve told you what\u2019s actually on it by what they left off. An institution that believed in free expression wouldn\u2019t reach for an opinion test at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clever part needs no rejection to work. The moment this guidance exists, anyone who wants a press pass starts editing himself. Skip the criticism about the latest policy. Drop the joke about von der Leyen. Keep it balanced, just in case. The Council doesn\u2019t need to silence anyone when it can make people nervous enough to do it themselves. There\u2019s also no paper trail, because nobody was ever formally told no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scheme arrives wrapped in good intentions, naturally. Brussels calls it widening engagement and bringing the institutions closer to the public. The other rules are reasonable enough: you need a real audience at home, a track record on politics and European affairs, no big sponsorship deals, no political office. Then the values clause does the job it was put there to do, sorting the approved from the unapproved. What you get isn\u2019t a press pool so much as a fan club with lanyards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The politicians who said anything were the ones already out of favor. Belgium\u2019s Gerolf Annemans, a Vlaams Belang MEP, went for sarcasm: \u201cI would go even further: nothing should be allowed to be questioned.\u201d Lucas Hartong, formerly a Dutch MEP for the PVV, was drier, noting that \u201cthe EU and genuine democracy don\u2019t exactly go hand in hand.\u201d The Sweden Democrats said the whole thing showed \u201cthe EU elite is becoming increasingly desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Take the word \u201cvalues\u201d off the front and look at what\u2019s underneath. The EU writes the definition, hands it to national governments, and uses it to decide which independent voices get to film its leaders. An institution that trusted its own legitimacy would open the doors and let the unflattering footage happen. Screening the cameras for loyalty first tells you how confident it really feels. And the creators most likely to pass? The ones who were never going to ask anything difficult anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What, un-elected bureaucrats don’t want to allow people access unless they’re obedient to EU values? Imagine that. https:\/\/reclaimthenet.org\/eus-new-creator-press-passes-come-with-a-loyalty-test Brussels is vetting cameras for loyalty and calling it press freedom in the same breath. By Cam Wakefield The Council of the European Union has decided that from July, online creators can attend EU summits and ministerial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17813"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17814,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17813\/revisions\/17814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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