Press releases
On World Press Freedom Day, the European Magazine Media Association (EMMA) and the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) reaffirm their commitment to defending press freedom and media pluralism.
This year’s theme, “Reporting in the Brave New World,” spotlights AI’s promise and peril for press freedom and journalism. While Artificial Intelligence can support innovation in the press sector and audience engagement, it also enables mass creation of synthetic content, obscures how news is selected and presented, ultimately threatening public access to trusted professional information.
A major concern is the unchecked use of professional media content by Large Language Models (LLMs), which rely on high-quality journalism without permission or compensation. This threatens the financial foundation of the press and risks replacing professional reporting and editorial content with unverified automated output. Considering the renewed strategic approach on culture and information, and the upcoming European Democracy Shield, editorial media must be recognised as essential defenders of European information sovereignty and democratic values against malicious artificial content and foreign interference.
EMMA and ENPA call for the following safeguards:
• Mandatory transparency and respect for intellectual property rights: AI providers must clearly disclose when and how media content is used in training or any other purposes, and obtain proper authorisation or licences with fair remuneration. These requirements must be central to the European Commission’s Code of Practice for GPAI and its transparency template, ensuring enforceability and protection of copyright and related rights.
• Protection against AI-driven disruption: Generative AI systems use professional content to produce low-cost, automated outputs that compete directly with press publishers, diverting traffic and advertising revenue. Without safeguards, these systems could slowly replace journalism altogether.
• Clear distinction between human and AI-generated content: purely AI-generated material must be clearly labelled and traceable. Citizens must be able to distinguish between professional journalism by media service providers defined in EMFA, and synthetic content to avoid deception and manipulation. This should not prevent usage of AI by editorial team if the final product is duly reviewed by a human and falls under legal or editorial responsibility.
• Discoverability of trusted press sources in AI-fuelled environments must be guaranteed to ensure citizens’ right to access reliable, verified information and to prevent the marginalisation of professional journalism in favour of unvetted or misleading content.
Artificial Intelligence must be handled in a way that strengthens, not weakens, press freedom and democratic values. EMMA and ENPA urge policymakers and AI developers to ensure that a free and independent press continues to thrive in the AI era.
The European Magazine Media Association, is the unique and complete representation of Europe’s magazine media, which is today enjoyed by millions of consumers on various platforms, encompassing both paper and digital formats.
The European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA) is the largest representative body of newspaper publishers across Europe. ENPA advocates for 14 national associations across 14 European countries, and is a principal interlocutor to the EU institutions and a key driver of media policy debates in the European Union.
