Strasbourg has always been a city of quiet symbolism, a place where Europe’s shared ideals are written into architecture and institutions. But this week, under Monaco’s presidency of the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, the city hosted a conversation that felt less symbolic and more urgent than ever. The occasion was a two-day summit titled “Youth facing disinformation – Why journalists matter,” held on 9 and 10 November. It brought together young delegates from all 46 member states of the Council of Europe, alongside journalists, media professionals, legal experts, judges, and institutional representatives. The gathering was part of the broader “Journalists Matter” campaign, an initiative designed to defend the essential role of independent journalism in democratic societies. From the very beginning, there was a sense that this was not just another diplomatic meeting. The atmosphere was charged with a shared anxiety about the state of public discourse, but also with a cautious hope that something could be done. The summit’s theme invited everyone to confront an uncomfortable question: in a world where digital platforms reward outrage and falsehoods spread faster than corrections, why should society still care about journalism? The answer, woven through every speech and workshop, was that independent journalism is not a luxury for media connoisseurs. It is the connective tissue of democratic life. Without it, citizens cannot make informed decisions; without it, leaders cannot be held accountable; without it, the very idea of public truth dissolves into a chaos of competing narratives. The conference was deliberately focused on young people, not as passive consumers of information but as critical actors who must be equipped to navigate a media environment that has become more deceptive and more sophisticated than at any point in history. Over the course of two days, they would not only listen to speeches but also test their own instincts, sharpen their critical skills, and help draft a collective vision for protecting press integrity across Europe.
The opening address set the tone for everything that followed. Isabelle Berro-Amadeï, Monaco’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and the current President of the Committee of Ministers, stepped before the delegates with a warning that was both measured and stark. “Information is all too often exploited, politicised or misrepresented,” she said. “Public debate cannot be built on distorted facts or biased arguments.” She spoke about polarisation and xenophobia as phenomena that are easy to provoke but extraordinarily difficult to undo. Once false narratives take root, she noted, they become woven into a society’s identity, and no amount of fact-checking can easily dislodge them. Her words carried particular resonance in a room where many young delegates had grown up witnessing the surgical precision with which disinformation campaigns can exploit social divisions. Berro-Amadeï was not merely describing a problem; she was also pointing toward a path forward. The fight against information manipulation, she insisted, cannot be won by individual countries acting alone. It demands a unified European response, one that focuses on empowering younger generations to evaluate digital content critically. That means investing in media literacy, supporting ethical journalism, and creating conditions in which reliable reporting is not crowded out by cheap sensationalism. It also means treating young people not as prey to be protected, but as allies in the defense of truth. Throughout her remarks, there was a clear understanding that democracy itself depends on the quality of the information citizens receive. A society that cannot agree on basic facts cannot address its shared problems. A society that has lost faith in journalism has lost a crucial mechanism for self-correction. Berro-Amadeï’s speech challenged the delegates to think of the conference not as an isolated event, but as a stepping stone in a longer European effort to safeguard the narratives that bind communities together.
One of the most striking contributions came from a figure who has spent her professional life in the swirling currents of contemporary media. Béatrice Borromeo Casiraghi, a journalist, director, and producer, brought a rare combination of inside knowledge and public visibility to the discussion. She did not try to soften the reality of the moment. “Online noise is where disinformation thrives,” she told the assembled delegates. “When facts, opinions and deliberate manipulation become harder to distinguish, the very fabric of our democratic societies begins to unravel.” Her words captured something that many people feel but struggle to articulate: the internet was supposed to democratise information, but it has also blurred the boundary between honest reporting and calculated deception. Borromeo Casiraghi spoke about the structural tension between technology companies that design their platforms to maximise engagement and journalists whose professional obligation is to serve the public interest. Social media algorithms are not neutral tools; they are engineered to reward intensity, novelty, and division. Journalists, by contrast, are trained to slow down, to verify sources, to weigh evidence, and to provide context. The collision between these two logics has left the news industry in a precarious position, squeezed by declining revenues and besieged by online abuse. Borromeo Casiraghi called for renewed support for reporters who hold power to account, particularly those working in local and regional newsrooms where the loss of resources has been most severe. But her contribution was not confined to diagnosis. In a moment that gave symbolic concreteness to the conference’s theme, she presented grants to four youth-led media literacy initiatives that had been selected after a Europe-wide call for proposals. Among the recipients were projects by the European Youth Press and Fundación Maldita.es, organisations that have been at the forefront of teaching young people how to debunk falsehoods and resist manipulation. The grants were intentionally small, but their significance was large: they sent a message that youth-led efforts to defend truth deserve not just applause but financial investment and institutional trust.
The institutional dimension of the summit gave its themes a weight that went beyond individual inspiration. Tanja Gonggrijp, the Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe, reinforced the idea that press freedom is not a privilege of journalists alone, but a fundamental right that belongs to every member of society. Without independent media, she suggested, other rights become fragile: the right to a fair trial, the right to participate in public life, even the right to vote loses meaning if the information on which citizens base their choices is poisoned. Her presence served as a reminder that the Council of Europe, as the continent’s principal human rights body, regards the protection of journalism as a legal and moral imperative. Even more consequential was the participation of Mattias Guyomar, the President of the European Court of Human Rights. His role brought the summit into direct conversation with the law. The Court has long held that press freedom is essential to democracy, but it has also witnessed, in recent years, the growth of new threats that the framers of the European Convention on Human Rights could hardly have imagined. Journalists today face not only physical violence and censorship, but also strategic lawsuits designed to silence them, invasive surveillance, legal harassment, and coordinated hate campaigns. Guyomar’s remarks were a stark reminder that the fight for reliable information is also a fight for the rule of law. When reporters are silenced, the public loses its capacity to scrutinise power; when the public loses that capacity, abuses go undetected and unchecked. The summit’s institutional thread was clear: defending journalism is not about shielding a particular profession from criticism. It is about safeguarding the conditions under which democracies can function at all. The presence of such senior figures sent a powerful message to the young delegates: the issues they care about are not fringe concerns; they are matters of continental legal and political significance.
The true heart of the summit, however, was the work undertaken by the young delegates themselves. On the second day, the conversation moved to the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg, where the formal rhythms of speeches and panels gave way to something more hands-on. Here, participants did not simply absorb information; they practised the difficult craft of verifying it. In a series of practical fact-checking workshops, they tested their ability to identify manipulated images, trace suspicious sources, and resist the emotional pull of sensational headlines. These exercises were not academic abstractions. They mirrored the challenges that young people confront every time they open a social media app, where false information about elections, public health, migration, and the environment circulates freely alongside legitimate news. In an environment designed to maximise confusion, even experienced media professionals can struggle to separate truth from falsehood. For an ordinary teenager or young adult, the task is overwhelming. The workshops did not pretend to offer a cure-all, but they did something perhaps more valuable: they gave participants a sense of agency and a set of practical tools. They also created space for honest conversation about the responsibilities of digital citizenship. After the exercises, the delegates turned to a more ambitious task: drafting a collective pledge outlining policy recommendations to support press integrity across Europe. The pledge was the product of long discussions, sharp disagreements, and careful compromise—exactly the kind of democratic dialog that disinformation seeks to destroy. The document was not intended to be filed away and forgotten. It was conceived as a living contribution to the policy debate, something to be shared with governments and institutions as a reminder that young citizens are not waiting for change to happen to them. They intend to shape it. The very process of drafting the pledge, with all its friction and negotiation, became a small demonstration of the values the conference championed: listening, argument, and the belief that shared understanding is possible even in a fragmented world.
By the time the summit drew to a close, something had shifted in the room. The initial framing, heavy with warnings about the dangers of disinformation, had broadened into a fuller appreciation of journalism’s constructive role in society. Journalism is often defended in negative terms—as a watchdog, a check on power, a source of uncomfortable truths that those in authority would rather ignore. But the Strasbourg conference made a point of celebrating what good journalism can positively create: a common set of facts from which debate can begin, a historical record that future generations can consult, a sense of belonging to a wider community that shares at least some baseline of reality. The young delegates who left the European Youth Centre did not depart with any illusion that disinformation would soon disappear. They knew better. They knew that the forces producing falsehoods are powerful, adaptable, and increasingly sophisticated. But they also left with a clearer sense of their own capacity to respond. They had learned how to question sources, how to recognise manipulation, and how to appreciate the unglamorous, painstaking work of honest reporting. They had also seen that they are not isolated. The Council of Europe, through its “Journalists Matter” campaign, through the legal protections of the European Court of Human Rights, and through the political leadership of member states like Monaco, is committed to this struggle. For Monaco, the presidency of the Committee of Ministers has been an opportunity to use a small country’s voice in service of a large and urgent cause. Digital disinformation does not respect national borders, and neither can the response to it. The Strasbourg summit was not the final word on that response. It was a milestone, a gathering of energy and intention at a particular moment in time. The pledge drafted by the young delegates will, in the coming months, make its way into the hands of those who can act on it. But the true measure of the summit’s success will be quieter and more dispersed. It will be found in classrooms, in newsrooms, in living rooms, in those moments when a young person hesitates before sharing something that seems too good—or too terrible—to be true. That pause, that moment of critical reflection, is where democracy begins. And it is precisely what Monaco’s presidency, and the entire Strasbourg effort, sought to protect.