EURSOC Two
07 May, 2004
In this week's Spectator British MEP Daniel Hannan publishes a scathing attack on the EU's culture of corruption - and the Brussels' press corps willing complicity in making sure whistleblowers' tales never see the light of day.
Hannan cites the scandalous treatment of German investigative reporter Hans-Martin Tillack as representative of the EU's "looking-glass world." Tillack - who is broadly Europhile - has conducted a long investigation into the Eurostat corruption scandal.
When he broadened his brief to look into allegations that EU officials failed to act on whistleblower tip-offs, Olaf, the EU's anti-corruption unit, ordered Belgian police to swoop.
Not on the dodgy officials Tillack looked set to expose - but on the reporter himself.
Tillack was held for seven hours without access to a lawyer. His private files and bank accounts were seized. Five years of work uncovering EU corruption was confiscated by the people he was investigating.
The silence from Tillack's fellow professionals was deafening. Hannan writes,
Journalists, after all, are usually exercised by the mistreatment of other journalists. When similar things happen in Zimbabwe, they are the subject of stern editorials. Yet here is the EU intimidating its critics with all the crudeness of a tinpot dictatorship. A message is being semaphored to the Brussels press corps: stick to copying out the Commission’s press releases and you’ll be looked after; make a nuisance of yourself and you’ll regret it. As the EU correspondent of a British newspaper told me mopily last week, ‘If they can do this to a German Europhile and get away with it, people like me might as well pack up and go home.’
Things got worse for Tillack. Attending a meeting of MEPs, he was barracked for "giving ammunition to anti-Europeans:"
Ah yes, the anti-Europeans: a useful phrase to cover anyone with the slightest qualms about how the EU operates. Someone says that there is too much waste in the structural funds? Well he would, wouldn’t he: he’s a bigot. A newspaper is calling for the CAP to be scrapped? That’s just its way of saying it hates foreigners. As Commissioner (Neil) Kinnock memorably told The Spectator, critics of the EU are xenophobes at heart — and no less so ‘just because they happen to speak fluent Catalan or whatever’.
So, apart from fear of being labelled a racist, what keeps Brussels' journalists tame?
Hannan says that many Brussels correspondents are actually in the pay of the EU, "advising" on media relations boards, editing official newsletters and so long. They have become part of the system they were sent to investigate - and the chances of them challenging a nice little earner like that are minimal.
Like Hollywood celebrities who advertise cat litter in Japan in the knowledge that such foreign entanglements will not damage their image in the US, Brussels-based journalists spin the official EU story to readers at home while pocketing the same readers' tax Euros to "consult" the commission on dealing with the media. (Brussels-based investigative newspaper The Sprout is the best place to find exposées of this carry-on.)
Some officials, Hannan claims, even expect copy approval of articles written about them.
The EU even set up its own news agencies to ensure it gets a good press. News channel Euronews gets funding from the European Commission. Hannan asked Commission President what he got for his money:
(Prodi's) reply was beyond parody. Yes, he said, he did give it grants, but such grants ‘in no way restrict the editorial freedom of the beneficiary, who must, however, respect the image of the European institutions and the raison d’être and general objectives of the Union’.
The result? Coverage of EU issues so shiny-happy that it makes North Korean propaganda look as anti-government as the BBC's Today programme.
The distinct absence, in some British newspapers at least, of coverage of this week's latest corruption scandal would seem to prove Hannan's case. With journalists so eager to attack Britain's Prime Minister on his support for everything from university fees and the war in Iraq - not to mention the gleeful publication of far-from-convincing evidence of 'torture' by British soldiers - the press has earned a reputation for fearlessness.
Brussels news, however, is a shocking exception. The only explanation can be that rather preventing the rise of Big Brother, when it comes to EU news, many journalists have become Big Brother.
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