Time is money. How the political parties bought the editorial time of all-news televisions during the electoral campaign| FreeEx Digest no. 9 (English)

The non-governmental organization ActiveWatch and the investigative publication Snoop unravel how substantial amounts of public money have been infused into the accounts of news broadcasters to promote candidates participating in the European Parliament elections, turning the newsrooms into entities selling political cosmetics. Tens and hundreds of thousands of euros have been paid by some parties for interviews and debates organized by journalists in programs with an editorial appearance. "

Read the ActiveWatch report here and the Snoop investigation here.

The report and investigation were conducted independently, using the same dataset.

This FreeEx Digest is part of the “Promoting critical thinking in a pre-electoral and electoral context” project funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The views and information presented in this project do not represent the position of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Responsibility for the accuracy of information and editorial decisions rests solely with ActiveWatch.