Young Europe #3 w/ Christophe Leclercq about EURACTIV, Fake News and Media in the European Union

Bonjour,

c'est Young Europe. Nous sommes aujourd'hui à Bruxelles

et

je voudrais vous

demander

à

vous

présenter.

Je

suis Christophe Leclerc, je suis français, comme vous pouvez le dire. J'ai travaillé dans cette ville depuis longtemps. Nous avons créé Your Active, qui est un

réseau

de

réseaux

sociaux. Je vais vous expliquer un peu plus. Et j'ai aussi travaillé avec Fondation Active, qui est un non-profit think tank, qui réfléchit à la santé du secteur

de l'éducation. Est

-ce que

c'était

votre goal, en tant

que

jeune, de commencer Your Active et Fondation ?

En

tant

que

jeune, j'avais beaucoup de idées. En tant

que

jeune, j'ai vraiment voulu créer une

compagnie

cross-border, car je suis de la génération

92,

qui ont vu l'éducation de l'éducation interne markete, et aussi l'éducation de programmes comme Erasmus. Nous pouvons revenir à ça. Et j'ai pensé que ces types de gens voulaient travailler dans des entreprises qui ne

sont

pas nécessairement des multinationales, mais qui sont

en

plusieurs locations. C'est plus ou moins ce que nous avons fait avec Your Active Media Network. Et en termes de topics, j'ai considéré un post-graduate study dans le journalisme. J'ai été offert aussi en sociologie, en business administration, et j'ai décidé de

faire

business administration, parce que ça a l'air plus sérieux. Et c'est probablement utile, de savoir comment faire de

l

'argent, et pas seulement de lire et de l

'éducation. Donc, vous

étiez en business administration, si je l

'ai

compris. Vous avez aussi fait des expériences internationales quand vous étiez, parce que vous avez été très enthousiés de travailler international.

Oui. Mon premier background c'était à étudier political science, et c'était très bon, mais très français.

Et

ensuite, j'ai passé un

programme

de business administration avec ce que je dirais pré-Erasmus type exchanges à New York University, et plus importantly à l'Université de Cologne. Et c'est

-à-dire

mon expérience que j'ai été vraiment européen et puis j'ai pris further initiatives.

Est

-ce

que vous

étiez en train de

apprendre en allemand ? Ou est-ce que

vous étiez en train de apprendre Bien

sûr, c'est un must. J'ai même essayé de lire un PhD thesis en allemand, mais c'était trop difficile. Je n'ai

pas

réussi. On le même en

train,

en allemand, avec

d

'autres personnes, nous développions une association qui s

'appelle

EG Europe.

Et

nous étions la principale organisation qui s

'est en train

de

faire

l'Erasmus. Je me rappelle un très famous lunch avec François Mitterrand, à l'Élysée. Et les gens de la Commission de

l'Europe

étaient flabbergasted que nous étions à ce niveau de ce

niveau

qui s'expressent les needs de notre génération. Et c'était un petit projet qui s'est créé par le Parlement à l'époque. Et c'est devenu un grand programme qu'on tous connaît.

Wow. C

'était votre premier contact avec l'European de l'Elysée. Mais qu'est-ce

que

vous faites après après

que

vous avez terminé vos études ? Quelle

était

-ce que que vous avez travaillé dans l'Université ou

l

'European ?

J'ai travaillé deux ans dans la car industrie pour Renault en Allemagne. en

train

de vendre en France à l'Allemagne. C'était un challenge et en parallèle nous avons développé cette organisation et après j'ai

fait

l'internité à l'Université de

l'Université

de

l

'Université de

l'Université

de

l'Université

de

l

'Université de

l'Université

de l'Université de

l

'Université de l'Université C'était

la première fois à Bruxelles ?

Oui,

un mois après. en parallèle de mon stage en la Commission

de l

'Université de

l

'Université de

l'Université

en partie de l'Université de

l

'Université de

l

'Université

de l'Université de l'Université

C'était un excuré de

l

'Université pour pouvoir développer d'université et qu

'il

y

a

des aspects

d

'autres People would look for cross-border careers and there should be a place where students with international experience would meet big national companies wanting to recruit outside their borders. This has worked very well. It was then taken over by some colleagues of mine and transformed into a recruitment company. And again,

I

was faced with different options and I decided to go for the more serious one, which was to join McKinsey, the strategy consultancy.

What did you learn at McKinsey? How long have you been at McKinsey and what did you learn there?

I've

been there for five and a half years. I learned about strategy, of course, also about organization within multinational companies. And I worked, I learned the skills to talk with corporate people, which was very useful in two further stages of my career. And I can move to that. First, after McKinsey, I decided to come back to my first love and to work within the European Commission. So I took the concur. I became an EU official. I decided to work at Digi Competition because I was not a lawyer. So I would have more to learn there. And I decided to focus on the Internet and the information society, because at the time it was a brand new topic.

And what I brought there from my McKinsey knowledge was an understanding about corporate strategies and industry structures, which lawyers typically don't have. So I was like a business minded guy within the competition lawyers circles.

Which year did you start at the commission?

And

when, like, or actually in which year did you

decided

to work close to the Internet?

Yes,

I was at the commission between 1995 and 1998. 1998 was the opening of the telecoms market.

A

big prerequisite for Internet growth was to liberalize the telecom market. So I was part of that team dealing personally with Internet matters, which were a tiny topic at the beginning.

And

the more I was understanding about it, the more I felt that something could be done with this technology. This was a time of the dot coms. You are too young to remember, but many Internet companies were developed with no business plan to speak of, with tons of money from the Silicon Valley.

I

didn't have much money. I had mainly an address book and therefore we did not spend too much and therefore we survived. So that's it's at the European Commission that I had the idea to develop an Internet media, which then became called your active.

So you

had the idea at the commission to start a media company

and

you

were

quite aware in the decision making process, when you decided there has to be an Internet company, not a print media company. Right. Could you explain why did you decide to do it more Internet, not print media, which is the case until today? Like it was

in

which year did you start?

I started the project at the end of 1998, but we were really fully operational only in year 2000 in English and then adding languages, etc. I would say initially we had a website and then we had a proper portal and then we could really claim to call it media. It was media in the concept from the outset. But of course, at the beginning we had to learn a lot. To answer your question on technology, I was driven not by some kind of Internet ideology. I'm not a technologue by background. I was driven by transparency

and

I understood that Internet would make access to information much cheaper. That volume would not be an issue. And at the time Brussels, the EU circles were very much of a black box. And we wanted to put a lot of information available for the citizens for free. And this we could not have done on paper. All our competitors were paper centered. The leader at the time was European Voice, a subsidiary of The Economist, which doesn't exist anymore. And I would claim that until the end of European Voice, which is only four years ago, we had a better website than this large group.

European Voice was back then a print medium, right?

Mainly, plus a website which was never as good as a newspaper.

Okay.

Would you say this is why it was just in Brussels or just related to the European Union, this medium? It

was

not a national medium, it was rather a European medium?

That's correct. European Voice, like other specialized media, was focusing primarily on Brussels' EU circles. They tried to branch out and to reach other capitals, but apart from a bit in London, it was difficult. Why? A, because they had only one language. That's kind of obvious, but it's still only one language in most publications. And secondly, because paper does not circulate as fast and as well as the internet. And I understood from the beginning that the internet would allow us to branch out and to have affiliates and different language versions in different countries, which we did very fast. We were present in Central Europe before enlargement, before 2004.

So,

they

were mainly focused on print medium and they later

failed,

so to say, right?

They were taken over, to be fair. Ah, they were taken over.

So,

it's an interesting point, if it's a print medium.

I

wonder, what do you think about, it's a few years ago, big tech entrepreneur, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos,

took

over

a

very, we know it, a very well-known print medium called Washington Post, which is in the medium industry, or

in

general,

very

well-known. What did you think when you, as a media entrepreneur, what did you thought then, when you heard about that?

Yes,

not only did I hear about the news, but in the meantime, I attended some presentations by the editors of Washington Post. Basically, Jeff Bezos contributed two things, money, but also a technology orientation, which is very important. The concern was whether he would respect the editor independence of the Washington Post, or transform it into a pure commercial venture. And he has been smart enough to respect the editors, and they have even increased the number of journalists.

But

now,

you

have many more technology-oriented people at the Washington Post, and they are not, like in the past, second-class or third-class citizens. So, I think it's a very good move.

Okay. But

is it

like,

he's not influenced in the editing process of the print medium, but he's still owner of the company. Is it so clear?

Can

it be said that the Washington Post is absolute neutral? Since,

let's

think about Donald Trump, who is attacking Jeff Bezos on a regular basis, and often because of that.

First of all, I don't think that the media has necessarily to be neutral. I think it's good to be balanced, which is a different notion from neutral. Secondly,

I

have nothing against owners of media companies. I am one.

So,

I have a sense of solidarity with this kind of big brother in Washington. But more seriously, I think that the balance and the editorial quality of the media is not determined mainly by the owner. Of course, there are owners that are not acceptable. It's determined mainly by the ethics that people follow, the codes of practices, etc., and the quality of journalists. And this has been good at the Washington Post for a long time. They were the ones triggering the Watergate scandal. So, there is no real concern. Your active works with something that I would call is a similar thing to the Washington Post. It's called Tagesspiegel. It's in Berlin. We have a number of media partners around Europe.

And I would say Tagesspiegel is to Germany what the Washington Post is the US, except they didn't have Watergate yet. But maybe it will come.

What would you say, coming back to your active media company you started, what would you say is

different

about your active compared to other

media

companies and media platforms?

Yes.

First of all, most of the media landscape in Europe is national or even regional. And it's okay to some extent because it fits the requirement of citizens to have information in the right language, but also customized to their own thinking. So, here at your active, we are talking about a very small media segment, which is a specialized media regarding EU policies. So, we are different because we are not a national media. We connect with national media.

We

are also different from other specialized media, I would say in two ways.

First

of all, because we are very decentralized. We have this network, which is not just translating, it's feeding news from the countries. So, we are not focusing just on the interface between the different EU institutions, but more on the interface between them, the national governments and the national stakeholders. That's one difference. How many languages do you publish? Twelve languages, but it's not us in Brussels. We are not like the Commission having an army of translators in Brussels. It's all very decentralized and done by journalists adapting not only the language, but also the style, etc.

And

the other main difference regarding EURACTIV,

I

would say that we are pro-European,

and

that's becoming different from the rest of the media. Because the media,

like

10 years ago, or even longer, when there was the French and the Dutch referendums, the media was mainly pro-EU. Now, most of them are kind of balanced and neutral. Some of them are opposed, and I think we stand out by being pro-European, very independent from the EU institutions, but definitely trying to be constructive.

Okay.

Like,

if you think in general about the media industry, what would you say,

especially

in the European Union, are the challenges of the media industry or media in general has to face right now?

Right. Most people answering your question would talk about press freedom, journalists being attacked, etc.

These

are issues, but they are well known,

and

they are not central issues in the majority of countries. Of course, I do feel for the journalists that were attacked or that are under pressure, even in the countries where we are present. I think there are two main issues. One is the revenue, very simply. The number of journalists in Europe has been reduced by about half, and the other half could disappear in the next 10 to 15 years if we don't act more forcefully within the media sector itself, but also facilitated by EU and national regulation. And the second big challenge, in my view, is innovation. We are talking, for most media, about medium-sized companies, not very large, a bit old-fashioned, typically led by former journalists.

They don't necessarily have a big vision about the business model and about the technology. That's why I believe strongly in speeding up innovation in the media. Some will be creations ex nihilo, startups, and some will be innovations within the existing media, and especially between the existing media. That's why Fondation Are Active took the initiative with the European Parliament to think of a program called Stars for Media, which is about training the next generation of media managers. There are many schemes to train journalists. Frankly, there are too many journalism schools. It's sad, but it's a fact. There are many schemes to exchange articles, etc. All this is editorial.

The main challenge of the media is business and technology.

If

I think about media consumption and technology, we could have seen innovation like in music. It was from buying CDs to going now to streaming platforms. The same in the movie industry. What would you say as a part of this industry

and

as an entrepreneur, where the journey is going in the news industry, in this part of the media industry, if it's about innovation and business models and technology?

Well,

there are analogies between all these sectors that you have mentioned, music, film and journalism.

And

it's the same challenge, which is that we have fixed costs. It takes a lot of money to create content, whatever the nature of the content. And there is a tendency for other platforms, which are different to some extent for music, film and news. There is a tendency for the platforms to capture the client or the reader's relationship and the data, and therefore also the advertising and sometimes the subscription money. There are a number of initiatives on the policy front in order to redress this balance. Commissioner Maria Gabriel mentions in her speeches lately that the media sector has lost 9 billion euros in revenues to the platforms.

This is absolutely huge and there is no way that the EU institutions or the governments can or should subsidize for such an amount. So we need to work on the policy front to make sure that the negotiations between the platforms like Facebook and Google and their subsidiaries, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. So that there is more balance between those and the media sector, which has paid to create all this news content.

But

as far as I know,

a

lot of traffic is coming from these platforms to media sites, to media platforms. Would it be not harmful to price this source of traffic?

There

is, apart from minor subscription schemes, there is no talk about making access to such information on the platforms paying. This is a kind of misleading rumor which has been spread by the other side, basically. And you say the traffic comes from the platforms. I disagree. It comes from the users. It's the users that are spending their time and that are in the end the target for the advertising. And the question is how to distribute in a fair way the money that is made between the users and the advertisers. And both have a role to play. The media companies creating the content and the platforms which provide part of the visibility between the users and the media companies.

Another topic closely connected to EU legislation made by the European Union is, which causes sometimes, as we can observe, causes sometimes a

high

level of EU skepticism in some countries of the European Union. Also what we currently can observe right now is a high amount of fake news. What would you say what should be done from your perspective as a media entrepreneur? What should be done and what can be done if it's about fake news? And how is this influencing the mission of EURA ACTIV right now?

Right.

First, I agree that this is a big issue and I would draw a parallel between the rise of the social media, the rise of disinformation, also called fake news, and the rise of populism, which risks undermining not only the EU but any kind of fact-based policy making. So it is worth spending time and energy in these policy circles. I would say from my viewpoint, there are two things to be done. One is to continue providing good media coverage in an innovative way. And that is a task of EURA ACTIV. It does it in combination with its national media partners, which typically are bigger than itself. So EURA ACTIV is a kind of bridge between national public spheres.

I should probably not be much longer on that front.

And

the other thing we have in the EURA ACTIV family is my own focus. It's Fondation EURA ACTIV. Fondation EURA ACTIV is focusing on two legs. One is training. I've mentioned that before. And secondly, policies. Policies to help the development of a healthy media sector. In this context, I was a member of the high level expert group on disinformation.

I

have to summarize very much the process that we went through last year. Basically, it led to a number of good recommendations. Most of them have not been detailed and implemented yet. But I hope it will be the case in the next mandate of the EU. We can come back to this point. The main thing which has happened is that a code of practice was signed between the platforms and the advertisers. It has been seen generally as relatively weak. It is not including measurements, figures, targets. And indeed, the first reports came out 10 days ago and they were generally seen as very disappointing. So the platforms have a lot more to do.

In the report by the high level expert group, we have recommended and the commission had endorsed that first there would be self-regulation, meaning the platforms can decide themselves in cooperation with their partners, how they will tackle the topic. And then if needed, we would move to co-regulation, which means that the EU institutions and the governments would take legislative and regulatory actions to push the platforms in the right direction. This is now badly needed. It's in fact a bit late. We are just a few months before the EU elections, but we have to look beyond the EU elections.

So

what would you say, like

easily

said, what would you say?

Are

we safe against fake news if we think now about upcoming EU elections with the measures you recently just mentioned?

No,

we are not safe, but it's too easy to take obvious solutions which can turn wrong. My summary of our report takes just one sentence in three elements. Avoid censorship, dilute fake news, promote quality content. Avoiding censorship has not completely been done. In my own country, France, there is a fake news law which is good on most points, but it does give the judge some powers to take away some articles or even to disconnect some TV channels, which the media people find excessive. Diluting fake news, this is what the platforms should be doing.

For

that, they need help in indexing the quality of sources, and that can be done by people outside the platforms, especially in the media sector itself. So there is a basis for cooperation there, which could even be remunerated. The principle is there in the code of practice from last September. It's called trustworthiness indicators, but they have not been implemented. And as for promoting quality content,

there

has been lots of talks about that, but not very much done. I can say more if you wish.

Yes,

please. The main point again is to regulate the relations between the platforms and their different partners, advertisers and media. It takes, for example, transparency. It takes the copyright directive, which is being finalized.

And

then it will be necessary for the competition authorities to accompany the negotiations. That sounds a little bit complex. You remember that. You

remember that I

was a DG competition official. So I know about these tools. And basically when you have two giants negotiating with millions of very small companies on the terms at which they can use their content, there is a high risk of abuse of dominant position. And the EU institutions should right from the outset say

co

-regulation is not just about carrots, do the right thing and derive good reputation. It's about sticks. There are sticks in the public sector to redress the negotiations. They should be waived firmly and used. One could also trigger what is called a sector inquiry to look at the whole ecosystem between platforms, media and the advertising world. And such a study would lead to a number of policy ideas which can then be transformed into decisions in the next EU mandate. And finally, one can take a number of positive measures regarding the media sector.

It's

not mainly about subsidies. There have been a string of subsidized media projects in the past and most of them have not been renewed. We can regret it, but that's the past. On the money side, one can help the media sector with two main things. One is skills. I've already addressed it. The other one is helping innovation, giving easier access to the media sector to R&D funding. There are billions under Horizon 2020.

There

is substantial amounts under Creative Europe

and

that could trigger the interest of media companies. And then there are other elements regarding the policies. For example, data privacy, a number of regulations of advertising are cutting across the board and they are affecting small companies in a much bigger way than the giants they were aimed for. And so one could develop what I would call differentiated legislation to facilitate creativity and the development of smaller companies.

This would be part of the next legislation, right?

Yes.

Coming next to the next legislation, what do you expect and how do you observe now the upcoming elections which are taking place in a few months?

Yes.

I'm sure there will be some destabilization and some populist gains in a number of countries. I don't think, I don't hope that there will be a majority of Eurosceptics in the next Parliament. And even if they were numerous, it's not given that they would come together. Some are fairly right, fairly radically right wing, some fairly radically left wing.

I

think there will be still a majority for mainstream parties. So the potential for a coalition in the past, it was a coalition between the People's Party and the Social Democrats. I think this coalition will be widened to the Liberals, including some French contingent with En Marche and the Greens, which are now a mainstream party. And between those four groups, I do hope that the next Parliament will be capable of taking decisions and supporting an effective commission. So

we

are talking about the next mandate of the EU and what priorities there could be. I will not address all of them,

but

I'm interacting with a number of MEPs, a number of stakeholders,

and

basically there is a need for one of the priorities to be around democracy. Let me step back for a minute and look at the 10 priorities that President Juncker proposed and got approved. One of them was on the digital single market. This was the result of the effort by lobbies, notably Facebook and Google, and also many others. I think this was necessary, but not sufficient. Now, this is like a horizontal policy, decreasing the borders. Now we need to build vertical policies, which is accompanying the development of a number of sectors, software, many creative industries, etc. But also the media sector.

My proposal would be to relate this to the general goal and to the need to have better tools for democracy. What is at risk is our existing democracy. People talk a lot, especially in your generation, about participative democracy, citizen initiatives.

All

this is good. I encourage it. I'm even active on that. But at the same time, you can see that our parliamentary democracy is undermined by fake news and other things that lead to populism. So my suggestion would be to have the following as one of the top 10 priorities. I would call it democracy in a digital world, sound platforms and independent media. So the goal is clear.

Sound

platforms, it's mean regulation, as we discussed earlier during this interview, and independent media has two aspects. One is press freedom, very important to be supported. And secondly, the sustainability of the revenue models of the media, which should not be mandated from Brussels, but it should be facilitated that the media can innovate and develop more sustainable business models. And this priority could lead to a reorganization within the parliament. You could have a media intergroup, which does not exist currently. It could also lead to a reorganization within the European Commission.

I would ask that there be a democracy directorate general, bringing together the people regulating the platforms, accompanying the development of the media sector and neighboring topics such as fighting illegal content and preserving the fundamental freedoms. I think democracy is important enough to be one of the top 10 priorities of

Europe. Mr.

Leclerc,

thank

you for this interview.

To

you. Yeah.

Alright.