FES BRIEFING SUSTAINING JOURNALISM DURING COVID–19 How the EU can turn Digital Platform Regulation into a Tool for Democracy Olaf Steenfadt July 2020 AN EXTINCTION EVENT Trustworthy, professional, and independent journalism is not only one of the foundations of pluralistic, thriving societies – it is suddenly being rediscovered as indispensable, even life­saving, during a global pandemic. However, COVID–19 has further undermined the media sector’s sustainability at a time when it is most sorely needed. This has been labelled as an‘extinction event’, particularly for local news, and the risks it represents are becoming visible not only to the gener­al public; it is also an issue and a priority for policymakers – although a structural response is not yet fully forthcoming. The newly published report‘A Lockdown for Independent Media?’ 1 examines this dilemma through the regional lens of South-Eastern Europe. Its thorough country-by-country diagnosis reveals similar patterns and leads to a rather blunt, though not surprising, finding. By and large, it seems rather unlikely that the downward spiral towards combined auto­cratic tendencies and so-called‘media capture’ by oligarchs and state actors can be remedied on national levels alone. Given these pre-existing conditions, the pandemic struck se­verely at the region’s press landscape, resulting in devasta­tion amongst journalistic communities and the media sector. This necessitates even more targeted intervention. changes of the 1990s until this very day. For the media, these are means of life support, equivalent to the provision of ventilators and oxygen units. This support must continue. However, the aforementioned report has also laid bare a frustrating truth: It has seldom resulted in a lasting remedy for the media’s hardships; – Continued short-term emergency aid and ongoing, longer-term political bargaining in Brussels must be complemented by a third, more systemic approach. This article argues that, by correcting market failures through the regulation of digital platforms, the European Commission and EU member states have another, very powerful instrument at hand to achieve this very goal. They can thereby sustain healthy media landscapes within the union, its neighbours, and even at a global level. A WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY In the wake of the COVID–19 shock and its turbulent conse­quences, a window of opportunity has coincidentally opened up by means of the Digital Services Act(DSA), a piece of landmark regulation accompanied by the European Democ­racy and Media Action Plans, announced by the European Commission earlier this year. – European COVID–19 aid packages currently under negotiation were supposed to include certain conditions for the recipient, such as on safeguards for the rule of law. The same logic should – and must – now be applied to EU member states, candidate countries, and states in the eastern and southern neighbourhood, focusing on the sustainability of independent journalism, media pluralism and the freedom of speech, information, and the press at large; – In addition, the EU and individual member states’ governments have already significantly supported media development in South-Eastern Europe since the regime 1 http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/budapest/16392.pdf Technically seen as a revision of the E-commerce Directive, the DSA is supposed to focus on trade, markets, and related regulatory approaches in order to finally reign in the so­called digital intermediaries, such as the mostly US- and in­creasingly China-based big-tech companies that dominate the markets of search engines, online shopping and those of social media platforms. Traditionally, the European Union was always about “the economy, stupid”. Its founding mothers and fathers sought reconciliation but built it very practically on coal and steel. The EU’s signature project in response to Germany’s reunification and regime changes further east and south was a common currency: the Eurozone. Furthermore, the compli­cated relationship with the United Kingdom(“I want my 1