2010-09-26

BRUSSELS – The Flemish community in Belgium has had a journalism fund for ten years giving work grants to journalists or small teams, who want to do in-dept research. Last week the journalismfund for the French community in Belgium, Fonds pour le journalisme, held its first anniversary – with strong results and an optimistic future.

There was no lack of good and important ideas, when the research grants for the French-speaking community were announced. 175.000 euro have been allocated in the past year for work grants, so far 167.335 euro have been distributed to 21 research projects. In the first year alone the jury looked at 48 applications overall requesting 742.319 euro.

The subjects spread far: from covering the route of a gram of heroine  from Afghanistan to Belgium to street children in the Belgian capital Brussels.

The money is granted by the government of the Belgian frenchspeaking community, and the political leaders already have indicated their willingness to continue the funding for the Fonds Pour Le Journalisme in the period 2011-2014.

The Fonds Pour le Journalisme supporting journalists in the frenchspeaking community of Belgium is run by the Association of Professional Journalists, AJP, while the Fonds Pascal Decroos supporting journalists in the Flemish part of the country was is an independent organisation. 

First of its kind

The Fonds Pour le Journalisme is the first of its kind in the “Francophoni”, the global frenchspeaking community, Martine Simonis, secretary general of the AJP emphasized. It thus is stepping on new lands, however they cooperate with existing organisations like the Fonds Pascal Decroos.

“In the short term, we want to safeguard the existence of the Fonds,” said Martine Simonis. “In the long term we will work for supporting journalism rather than supporting media,” she said emphasising, that a debate about quality journalism and working conditions for journalists was necessary.

The grant-giving project for the frenchspeaking Belgian community had 250.000 euro to work with in the first year, of which €75.000 were allocated for the administration. The figures have to be seen in relation to the about 4.5 million inhabitants.

Other established research grant organisations are the Fonds Pascal Decroos in the Flemish part of Belgium, who distributed € 240.000 for grants in 2009 and € 220.000 for grants in 2010, the Flemish part of Belgian has about 5.5 million inhabitants.

Scoop, a similar structure for investigative journalism grants supported by a major grant by Denmark and given to journalists in South-East and Eastern Europe has a €1.1 million euro grant for four years.

The European Parliament last year allocated € 1.5 million for two years of a pilot project on European level, and the Commission is expected to publish the call very soon. 

Written by Brigitte Alfter