At a panel with the ‘traditional’ media the question came up whether established media cover EU affairs in-depth enough? The question was primarily directed to the chief editor of De Standaard, one of the biggest Belgian newspapers (based in Brussels) but with quite a poor record of EU coverage and with only one (!) journalist covering the EU.

So what did Peter Vandermeersch, chief editor of  De Standaard answer? Basically he avoided answering the question (“don’t think we have a poor record…hahaha”) and instead compared the EU with the ‘obscure’ topic of Latvian poems claiming that an editor has to make editorial decisions and needs to listen to the customers (not readers or citizens!) – And he continues: “Latvian poems can be beautiful but are not relevant…”

In that moment Hans Laroes, head of news and editor in chief of NOS Niewus, one of the Dutch public broadcasters, jumped in to ‘help’ his colleague by saying that “the media does not like free trips by the EU”.. obviously a comment that neither answers the question nor shows a huge deal of professionalism.

So, first of all, both journalists clearly fail to understand the significance of the EU. Furthermore it is questionable if such an arrogant and ignorant behavior towards the EU can be justified with any journalistic ethos.

At the same time I am wondering whether this attitude is widespread among editors of newpapers/broadcasters? If it is a common thing it is hardly surprising that we are faced with poor EU reporting and a lack of public debate/knowledge about the EU!