#eBook Of OSCE and Media by GAFG

 

By Steve Clemons, Zijad Bećirović, Olga Algayerová
Co-edited by: Silvie Drahošová

The relationship between media, truth, and security has never been more fragile—nor more consequential. As you will read in the pages that follow, the erosion of press freedom is not a distant concern confined to authoritarian regimes. It is happening here, now, across the OSCE region, accelerated by technologies that outpace our ethical frameworks and amplified by actors who understand that controlling information is the first step toward controlling societies.

This eBook emerges from the proceedings of the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting held in Vienna on 17–18 March 2025—a gathering that brought together journalists, diplomats, technologists, and civil society advocates under the shared conviction that media freedom is not optional for democracy. It is its circulatory system.

What you hold is not a conventional conference report. It is a provocation, a warning, and a set of pathways forward. The contributors to this volume—from Steve Clemons' unflinching critique of mainstream media's hubris to Harvey Dzodin's radically practical reward-based model for combating disinformation, and Nathan Coyle's urgent call to decolonize AI training data to Philipe Reinisch's synthesis of human connection and technological ethics—share a common refusal to accept decline as destiny.

The numbers are sobering. At least 124 journalists were killed in 2024 alone. Over 90% of AI training data originates in the Global North, while 43% of global conflicts occur in Africa. A single deepfake audio clip may have swung a national election in Slovakia. And yet, as Olga Algayerova reminds us in her keynote, we possess the tools, the legal frameworks, and the collective institutions to reverse this tide—if we choose to act.

The Helsinki spirit of 1975 was never meant to be a museum piece. It was a living commitment to the idea that security cannot be comprehensive without freedom, and freedom cannot endure without truth. The essays in this volume ask us to renew that commitment for an age of generative AI, fragmented media ecosystems, and resurgent authoritarianism.

The question before us is not whether media freedom is under threat. It is whether we still possess the courage to defend it—not as journalists alone, but as societies, as institutions, and as individuals who refuse to confuse information with insights, noise with news, or propaganda with truth.

This eBook is offered as open source for a reason. Its insights belong to everyone who still believes that a free press is not a luxury but a lifeline. Read it. Share it. Act on it.

Dimitris Giannakopoulos

Of OSCE and Media

Read the eBook it online HERE!
Read it online & downloading it as PDF HERE!
Or enjoy reading it online & downloading it in PDF format HERE!