A Reporters Guide to the EU
A Reporters Guide to the EU addresses a pressing need for an effective, in-depth guide to reporting on this major governing body, offering practical advice on writing and reporting on the EU and a clear, concise breakdown of its complex inner-workings.
Sigrid Melchior, an experienced Brussels-based journalist, gives a detailed overview of the main EU institutions and explains the procedures for passing EU law. Interviews with professionals working for the EU, from areas including lobbying, public relations, diplomacy and journalism, are featured throughout the book.
Building on this, the second half of the book provides useful journalistic tools and tips on how to approach EU reporting. It identifies common mistakes in reporting on the EU and how to avoid them, as well as offering guidance on investigative reporting. Melchior also details how to work with information gathered and maintained by EU institutions, including their audiovisual archives, the Eurostat and Eurobarometer, which are invaluable resources for journalists and journalism students.
With few aspects of political life that remain untouched by EU decision-making the book demystifies the EU system and its sources, enabling professional journalists and students of journalism to approach EU reporting with clarity and confidence.
For updated resources related to A Reporters Guide to the EU, please visit www.areportersguidetotheeu.com
Sigrid Melchior is a Brussels-based freelance journalist. Since 2007 she has covered EU politics and European politics for Swedish written press. She has previously published Handbok i EU-journalistik (2013) and EU-handboken (2016) in Sweden.
First published 2017
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2017 Sigrid Melchior
The right of Sigrid Melchior to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Melchior, Sigrid, 1981 author.
Title: A reporters guide to the EU / Sigrid Melchior ; edited by Stephen Gardner.
Other titles: Reporters guide to the European Union
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016047680| ISBN 9781138678637 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138678620 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315558820 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: European Unon. | European UnionPress coverage. | Reporters
and reportingEuropean Union countries. | Press and politicsEuropean
Union countries.
Classification: LCC JN30 .M443 2017 | DDC 341.242/2dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047680
ISBN: 978-1-138-67862-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-67863-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-55882-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Cenveo Publisher Services
The book you are holding in your hands is what its called: a reporters guide to covering the European Union. I wrote this book to give both professional reporters and students of journalism, from any EU country, some concrete tools for following any story that emanates from, or leads to, Brussels. Most European reporters will at one point stumble across a story that has its roots in the EU; this is inevitable when so many of our national rules are decided at the EU level.
My aim and hope is that we will all raise our standards when we write about the EU. By that I mean that we should be more careful with facts, skip the stereotypes about the EU institutions and EU countries other than our own and explain to our readers what effect EU policies have on their lives and not simply repeat our national politicians versions of what goes on behind closed doors in Brussels. I hope that we can dig up our own stories about the EU institutions and ignore their pre-packaged news, i.e. propaganda, and that we publish without considering whether our story will influence EU opinion in any way. In short, that we treat the EU as other political institutions are treated: seriously and critically.
Because whether we take the EU seriously, ignore it or make fun of it, laws continue to be made in Brussels and Strasbourg. The gap between how much the EU influences your life and mine and how little we are aware of it and try to influence it is growing every day. That gap is, in my opinion, the EUs biggest democratic deficit.
This book was originally published in Swedish in 2013. It was updated, translated and re-written in 2016, in large part before the United Kingdoms referendum on leaving the EU. At the time of writing, there are still 28 EU countries. The negotiations about the coming UKEU divorce have not yet started and what the future relationship will look like is unknown, which is why I leave speculation about this out of the book.
Ahead of the Brexit vote, many false claims were made about the EU by British politicians and the debate became superficial in some parts of the British media. This proves the main point that I want to make in this book: that it is important to talk about the EU and explain what it is and how it works so that people can make informed decisions.
There is some factual information in this book that will be outdated and inaccurate in a few years, so please do not copy-paste facts without double checking if they still hold true. At the end of each chapter, there are links to all websites mentioned in the text. Some of these links will also become outdated, but you can find the correct ones, updated on a regular basis, here: www.areportersguidetotheeu.com.
If you have any questions or remarks about the book or about EU journalism, please get in touch.
Brussels, September 2016
Sigrid Melchior
This book is to a large extent based on background interviews. Thank you to all the unnamed civil servants, politicians and press people in the EU institutions, political scientists, lobbyists and other EU people who have helped me with facts, cases, ideas and anecdotes.
Thank you friends in the Brussels bubble and fellow EU reporters longtime colleagues and new acquaintances for big and small tips that have been useful for this book: Brigitte Alfter, Staffan Dahllf, Jan Werts, Andreas Liljeheden, Rikard Jozwiak, Rikke Albrechtsen, Meabh McMahon, Gareth Harding, Ryan Heath, Jon Worth, Carina Folkesson Lillo, David Lundy, Andreas Mllerleile and Aleksandra Eriksson Pogorzelska. Thank you Elin Hellstrm and Becky Sear for explaining the publishing business to me and thank you Stephen Gardner for editing the text.
