Author Description

In times of elections and referenda, the media zoom in on the candidates, analysing their every word, move and minute gesture. In today's 24/7 digital universe, the mass media have an unprecedented power to pick apart, comment and scrutinise our future leaders as never before. But who is making sure that coverage is equitable, professional, and complying with some minimum standards of "decent" journalism? Who makes these rules? Following France's elections and just two months before Germany goes to the polls the European Audiovisual Observatory, part of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, has just released a new in-depth report: "Media coverage of elections: the legal framework in Europe". Produced in collaboration with Amsterdam's Institute of Information Law (IViR), this new report offers a roadmap to overarching European media law in times of coverage of elections, before zooming in on individual countries as case-studies. A final chapter teases out the trends from these individual examples in order to offer some pertinent conclusions.