Journalism is getting tougher, as heightened by the recent arrest of two editors*. This event focuses on major challenges for journalism in Turkey and the Balkans.

The roundtable discussion focused on the risks for media integrity in the region and possible ways to fight them, will be held on Wednesday, December 2, 2015, at Cezayir Restaurant, Istanbul, from 9:30 am to12.30. The discussion is organised by Turkey's Platform for Independent Journalism (P24), a member of the SEENPM network, as a part of the South East European Media Observatory project.

The discussion will be moderated by P24 Founding Member Yavuz Baydar. The four speakers who will lead the discussions are Brankica Petkovic from the Peace Institute in Ljubljana, Remzi Lani from the Albanian Media Institute, Aslı Tunç from Istanbul's Bilgi University and Mehveş Evin, a journalist with the Diken online newspaper.

The speakers and the participants will discuss various dimensions and problems of media integrity in the Balkans and Turkey, including non-transparency and corrupt patterns in media ownership and financing, as well as in governing and operations of public service broadcasting and media regulators. The debate will try to seek answers for several weighty questions, including how relations between media and political and economic centres of power influence editorial policies of the media and rights of citizens to impartial and accurate information; if journalists are victims or proponents of corrupt media patterns; the similarities and differences between the Balkan countries and Turkey in these areas and what can be done to change corrupt media systems. The debate will also focus on what we can expect from our governments, media communities, citizens and societies, and from outside actors such as the European Union or other international players.

*Can Dündar, editor of newspaper Cumhuriyet (second right), and the newspaper's Ankara Bureau Chief, Erdem Gül (second left) were arrested on last Thursday over a report alleging that the Turkish government sent weapons to armed groups in Syria.