Journalists in exile visit Brussels as part of ESTDEV project to support independent media in Belarus
ESTDEV’s two-year-long project culminated with a study visit to Brussels at the end of last year.
Eight Belarussian journalists in exile met with officials from the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European parliament and the European Commission in late November. One of the topics of discussion was regarding the challenge of ensuring their messages reach their target audience. During a meeting with cabinet members of European Commission vice-president Věra Jourová, they expressed dissatisfaction with the way the search algorithms from Google, Meta and other platforms prioritise media sympathetic to Lukashenko’s regime over independent media.
In December, after the journalists met with members of her cabinet, Jourová raised concerns about Belarus with Google’s president of global affairs, Kent Walker.
“Fighting disinformation and promoting media freedom are two sides of the same coin — and we want Big Tech to do both,” Jourová told the Financial Times recently. “This means ensuring the visibility of trustworthy information online, not the propaganda of Minsk or the Kremlin.”
The journalists also met with Juozas Olekas, the chair of the European parliament’s delegation for relations with Belarus. Olekas told the Financial Times that so far “Big Tech didn’t show any willingness or interest to address this problem,” as search algorithms typically read banned media as “broken links,” pushing them even further back in the search results.
The study visit to Brussels was the final activity of a larger ESTDEV project to strengthen independent media in exile that promotes and protects democratic values in Belarus.
“In today’s political situation, the role of the free press is crucial for democratic resilience, to actively promote and protect democratic values,” said Anna Alen, ESTDEV’s project adviser.
The project also included professional training for Belarussian journalists, who were able to connect with experienced media professionals to support them as they developed their professional skills, explored options for new media projects and learned about ways to combat disinformation and attempts at polarising society.
“The visit to Brussels—the heart of European democracy and home to the EU’s most important institutions—was a logical final activity that provided an overview of EU mechanisms and allowed these journalists to establish highly useful contacts for their work,” said Alen.
Estonia has been at the forefront of defending media freedom in the world and currently ranks in the top 10 of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index. The value of free and independent media has been explicitly expressed through specific projects aimed at empowering journalists, as well as in Estonia’s leadership of the Coalition for Media Freedom. Through this project, Estonian media specialists have been able to support democracy and freedom of the press in Belarus by sharing their experiences restoring Estonia’s free and independent media over the past three decades.
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