1 SPEECH BY THE OSCE REPRESENTATIVE ON FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA, AMBASSADOR JAN BRAATHU DELIVERED TO THE OSCE PERMANENT COUNCIL ON 27 NOVEMBER 2025 Mr. Chairperson, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is an honour for me today to present a summary of my second report to the Permanent Council as the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. The final version of the full report will be distributed tomorrow. This year, under Finland’s Chairpersonship, we also mark the 50th anniversary of the Helsinki Final Act, a milestone that reminds us that media freedom is not only a fundamental democratic value but also an essential pillar of security. Since my previous address, I have worked closely with participating States, journalists, and civil society across the OSCE region. It has been a busy period, with 126 public interventions and correspondence with 46 participating states, in addition to conferences, workshops and country visits. More information on activities are listed in the Annex to my report. These engagements have reconfirmed a fundamental principle at the heart of the OSCE’s comprehensive approach to security: media freedom is not a perk of democracy or a luxury, it is a prerequisite for it. Nor is media freedom a threat to stability, it is a cornerstone of stability. This second report, while acknowledging meaningful cooperation and some progress, also carries a note of caution: we are witnessing a significant shift in the media environment, and the choices we make today will determine the resilience of our media and, by extension, our democratic security architecture, for years to come. Seemingly marginal developments carry with them the danger of “normalization” and if not curtailed, may develop and become a “new normal”. My Office remains focused on constructive engagement and practical support to safeguard media freedom in principle and in practice. FOM.GAL/11 /25 28 November 2025 ENGLISH only
2 Paradigm Shift Dear colleagues, Across a growing number of OSCE participating States, we are witnessing pressures on media freedom. Securitisation of information and economic constraints compound this deterioration: journalism, as a profession, is struggling for survival. Advertising revenue has migrated to digital intermediaries, local outlets are disappearing, and sustainable business models remain elusive. We are witnessing a paradigm shift in the information space, one that threatens media freedom, democratic discourse, and our security architecture. The environment in which information is sought, debated, and defended is rapidly being reshaped by political and corporate forces, recalibrating the flow of information often to serve narrow interests rather than the public good. Online spaces, which contribute to democratizing communication, have also become fertile ground for manipulation, polarization, and disinformation. As the American commentator Peggy Noonan recently pointed out, “We are a nation divided by algorithms.” She was speaking about the United States of America, but indeed, we are a world community divided by polarising algorithms. Noonan added that “We are all getting different versions of reality every time we look at a screen, and it is hurting us.” And indeed, it is. Compounding these challenges is the increasingly common practice by some political figures to disparage and smear journalists, an approach that corrodes public confidence in the press and encourages hostility toward those tasked with informing the public. I look forward to working with the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and others on how to follow up OSCE commitments for authorities to desist from verbal abuse of journalists. Today, this shift is further accelerated by the transformative power of artificial intelligence and the dominance of global social media platforms. Automated content generation and recommendation algorithms increasingly determine what people see, what they believe, and how they act upon information, often without transparency or accountability. Recent research coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has revealed that generative AI assistants, already in use by millions of people, routinely misrepresent news content. Of the 3,000 responses analysed from major AI platforms, 45 per cent of the responses contained significant factual or sourcing errors. This confirms that unverified AI outputs can distort public understanding and ultimately undermine confidence in democracy itself. Not to mention, the immense financial damage that the use of AI by search platforms is causing to the news industry.
3 SAFETY OF JOURNALISTS The polarization of societies is eroding public trust and it is creating an increasingly confrontational climate in which the media are on the front line. Across the region, east and west of Vienna, we have seen how protests have evolved into flashpoints where journalists face harassment, intimidation, and, at times, violence from both state and non-state actors. The safety of journalists in the OSCE region is under unprecedented pressure. Numbers on attacks against journalists monitored by different organizations vary quite substantially, from 124 attacks recorded by the Council of Europe Platform on Safety of Journalists to 428 instances documented by the Mapping Media Freedom Platform. For Serbia alone, the Public Prosecution of the Republic of Serbia has documented attacks against 99 journalists 1 so far this year. These are official figures. This is an extraordinarily high number. What is clear is that the number of attacks and incidents across the OSCE region is unacceptably high and increasing both east and west of Vienna. Journalists face online harassment, targeted smear campaigns, and, in many cases, unfounded and abusive judicial prosecution for their reporting. The confrontational nature of protests, sometimes combined with inadequate respect for press freedom by law enforcement, has further escalated risks. Law Enforcement and the Media In recent months I have noted with growing concern the excessive use of force, intimidation and access restrictions by law-enforcement personnel against journalists covering public protests. Across multiple jurisdictions there are credible, documented instances in which journalists