The third and final session was called ‘...The First Casualty is Truth: Europe's Media and the Information Crisis’ and was led by n-tv presenter Constantin Schreiber.

Asiem El Difraoui criticised the fact that the European media had only partially succeeded in reporting on the refugee crisis objectively, and had only shown the negative aspects instead. The European media lacked a strategy for countering the growing radicalisation of attitudes toward refugees. He recommends founding/establishing a truly European medium for the southern Mediterranean region as a means of dispelling propaganda and in the interest of advancing trustworthy European journalism.
Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, editor-in-chief of the Lithuanian news platform ‘Delfi.lt’, focused on Russian propaganda, which is spread mainly in and through social media. When journalists write about propaganda and Russian troll factories, they become the personal targets of trolls. The EU should focus more on tackling the propaganda issue, take action and ‘not leave our people to the Russians’.
Nataliya Gumenyuk added that even large media outlets spread false stories, mainly because of viewership or readership quotas. These lies pop up again and again, she says, even in TV discussions. Another new phenomenon is the rise of online threats and harassment to discredit journalists and independent media, a problem that has grown exponentially and contributes to the fact that fewer and fewer people trust the media.
Ulrike Guérot expressed concern about a possible correlation between a deterioration of the system and the deterioration of the media. ‘The erosion, the hollowing-out of the media is an erosion of credibility. As Habermas already said: We lose the filter, we lose control. We can no longer assume that what is written in a supra-regional daily is intelligent, and that the country knows what it has to think – those days are over.’
Another issue was the perceived lack of vision and absence of working standards in the European media. Even if the media in the different European countries have different ways of working, Agron Bajrami said, they should have the same purpose and tasks: to contribute to the process of reaching consensus within the EU.
Stefan Kornelius, head of the foreign policy department at the Süddeutsche Zeitung, said: ‘We are part of a game and part of a distortion war, which isn’t all that shocking to me. It is a sign of our times. The media is a great resonating body in which everyone can find his or her own truth. But we should fight the tendency to blur the lines between truth and untruth, between lies and reality.’
Sonia Mikich expressed concern about ‘the question of our qualities as journalists, our credibility, ethics and professionalism. We have forgotten our role as journalists, which is to carefully discern the dialectics between truth and sentiment.’ Facts have become uninteresting, she says, because all anyone cares about is feelings, which affects reporting. The media should not allow itself to become opportunistic and corrupt just because society at large is awash in emotion.
For ‘Bild’ editor-in-chief Tanit Koch, the question is less ‘whether or not we lose the system, but whether we lose social media’ – especially with respect to traditional political parties such as the CDU and the SPD, which have fewer followers combined than the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party (AfD). She also worried about whether or not journalism from the cities (urban journalism) captures the concerns of the rural population, and that not mentioning certain facts – such as the nationality of suspects when reporting crime, for example – leads to greater distrust of the media in general.
VDZ Managing Director Stephan Scherzer is alarmed by the revival of the Nazi word ‘Lügenpresse’ (lying press), a favourite saying of Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and its frequent use even in traditional media. It is now being used quite self-evidently without quotation marks, even in educated debates, and not only in Russia or in the Baltic countries, but in our society as well. The media must be careful not to become too elite; that is not what an open society needs.
Annalisa Piras thinks the migration topic will be with us for the next 50 years, making it all the more important that the European media is aware of their responsibilities. The ‘frivolous lies’ about Brexit are extremely worrying, she says, as anti-xenophobic and hate-motivated crimes in the UK spiked 58% after the referendum, mainly in response to reporting from the British yellow press. Discussions about the importance of truthful reporting are crucial to our society and ‘to our responsibility as communicators’. She also sees a vital need for cooperation between the media and the EU in the area of migration.
Jim Egan is surprised by the fact that participants at journalistic conferences often regard journalism as being in a ‘constant state of crisis’ and very often wish that the Internet and social media had never been invented. He also mentioned the worrying decline in freedom of information. He said that while the overall quantity of information has never been so great, quality and reader understanding has never been so low, which makes it possible for propaganda and opinion-based journalism to be presented as facts. For him, the answer to journalists is ‘to remind ourselves of the basic principles of journalism and the aspects of our actions at the core of our profession: accuracy and unbiased balance.’
Daniel Gerlach warned not to respond to the growing importance of dubious and manipulative colportage in social media with an imitation of their clickbaiting methods. ‘We should stick to the old school approach: less spectacular headlines, while fulfilling whatever the headline promises within the text itself.’
Andreas Umland broached once again the topic of Russia and the Russian media, which excite public opinion by spreading propaganda. He named various projects aimed at countering propaganda, for example, the EU Mythbusters, the EU EAST STRATCOM Task Force or the Ukrainian platform stopfake.org, which ‘combats counterfeit information about events in Ukraine’ in ten different languages.
Mathias Müller von Blumencron, chief editor of digital media at the ‘Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’, took the opportunity to make a positive appeal to colleagues. He wanted to see more ‘fighting spirit! We still have the most powerful media and outlet brands in the world. It is a privilege to be part of them.’ For all its shortcomings, the Internet is still one of the best inventions journalists have ever known, and they should invest more energy in the digital market. ‘Our most important and particular duty is to spark a passion for truth in our readers, but we lose this purpose when we allow ourselves to become too smug or complacent.’

The session – and thus the conference – ended with a statement by Anne McElvoy, who said that it was not the first time that the media has been confronted with calls for truth as opposed to opinion and polemics. Though journalists and the media are under enormous pressure, they should continue to check themselves as well. People often compare stories and opinions in the newspaper with their own life situation and find a big difference. Falsity has become very popular, but media should look at why that is – what people are looking for and what moves them. There is a lot more ‘lying press’ out there; it isn’t just media in the democratic West. The media and media representatives should stop ‘navel gazing’ about their doubts and instead start thinking about what they can offer readers.

SUMMARY
Session III showed the extent of the crisis in Europe's media. Disintegration, populism, Brexit, the refugee crisis and the rise of national and populist forces have left not only Europe in a storm of conflict, but Europe's media as well. Much of the discussion revolved around failures, mistakes and uncertainties, coupled with a desire for greater exchange and dialogue –with readers, viewers and users, but also with one other. More intensive exchange and jointly developed strategies of ethical standards could serve to strengthen traditional media and remedy the ‘lack of vision and absence of working standards in the European media’.

Please find here the summary of the M100 Media Award.