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| 49. | The availability of trustworthy information from pluralistic sources is crucial for well-functioning democratic electoral processes. It warrants not only protection from external commercial and political interference, but also from potential misapplication of the internal processes of VLOPs and VLOSEs, as recognised by Article 17 of the proposed European Media Freedom Act (34). Journalists and media service providers fulfil a vital role in gathering, processing, and reporting information to the public, a role even more critical during election times. Independent news media service providers and organisations with well-established internal editorial standards and procedures are widely regarded as trusted sources of information. Providers of VLOPs and VLOSEs should, therefore, collaborate with independent media organisations, regulatory authorities, civil society and grassroots organisations, fact-checkers, academia, and other relevant stakeholders on initiatives to enhance the identification of trustworthy information and users’ accessibility to pluralistic news media content related to elections from trusted sources.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.