TV stations asked to ‘beef up’ coverage by EU Commission

TELEVISION stations give EU news less than a tenth of the airtime they give national news, undermining citizens’ right to information and preventing them having a democratic input, according to the European Commission.

The public wants more information about the Union and in the eight months since the launch of their YouTube site, they have had 10 million views, Commission vice-president Margot Wallstrom said.

To overcome this, she plans to help television stations throughout Europe increase their coverage by co-operating with one another, by providing them with news and documentaries about what is happening in Brussels and beef-up existing information for the public and journalists.