European Journalism Centre

European Journalism Centre
Formation	1992
Headquarters	Maastricht, Netherlands
Type	School of Journalism
Interests	“Fake News”, journalism
Sponsored by	Adessium Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
An independent and non-profit institute sponsored by several influential government-backed NGOs. One of EJC's goals is to "retrain journalists", a similar geopolitical stance and aim of Stopfake.

The European Journalism Centre is an independent and non-profit institute based in Maastricht in The Netherlands. It works closely with governments and the commercial media. One of the EJC's goals is to "retrain journalists", a similar geopolitical stance and aim of Stopfake.

History

It was founded in 1992 on the initiative of the European Commission. In 1994 it arranged more than a hundred roundtables, mostly in English.

Its aim is to give further training to mid-career journalists and media professionals. It has significant financial resources that would be tempting for struggling journalists in a cash-poor media world - for people with the right attitude. "We fund storytelling and innovation through grants, inspire people through events...improve skills through training...trips and research and build sustainable journalism through media development"

No News is Bad News

The school runs a program, No News is Bad News, within a strategic partnership with Free Press Unlimited, supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The program includes:

• Over the next five years, they will be "working with them to professionalise and strengthen journalists and media organisations in 17 countries, so that they can serve as drivers and catalysts for change." This is their way of describing building pro-Western media networks and supporting regime changes (see Syria below).

• It also wants to combat exposure to fake news in teenagers, by producing "a useful toolkit to help them to identify false information and use real information.”

• Russian Language News Exchange a network of media from Central and Eastern European countries and beyond. The Prague-based network was started in 2015 after the intensification of the tensions with Russia, and is run by Natalia Marshalkovitch. It wants to "disseminate the most relevant information for more than 40 million people", ie readers of Russian news outside Russia.

• In 2018, the Syrian Journalists Association (a murky group with unclear organization and funding) created a WhatsApp group to spread atrocity propaganda from East Ghouta. The WhatsApp Members include journalists and activists from Ghouta, and journalists from CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, Reuters, France 24 and Der Spiegel. It is responsible for spreading propaganda videos from Syria "On April 7, 2018, international journalists received photos and videos of a chemical weapons attack via our WhatsApp group.”

Funding

In 2017, European Journalism Centre launched ‘The News Impact’ programme, an attempt to assemble hands-on professionals who may be able to tutor future journalists, on the grounds of innovation, tools of journalism as well as technology. This program, which usually consists of multiple annual events is powered by Google News Initiative.

It receives massive funding ($1,500,000) from the US organization News Integrity Initiative.

Other partners are the Dutch deep state foundation Stichting Democracie en Media (Democracy and Media Foundation), Facebook Journalism Project, Google News Initiative, the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave the Centre $15,4 million over an 8-year period.

 

Sponsors

Event	Description
Adessium Foundation	A secretive Dutch foundation that donates to projects backed by Western governments.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation	Very influential and rich foundation established to take leadership of global health.

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