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On 18 November 2022, the Rechtbank Amsterdam (Amsterdam District Court) delivered a judgment on the scope of journalistic freedom. The case concerned an online newspaper article about the modus operandi of two fairly well-known legal and tax advisors. While the advisors were portrayed particularly negatively, the Court ruled that the article was not unlawful and did not have to be corrected. Importantly, it held that the advisors should be considered "public figures" subject to increased criticism, and that the statements in the article had had a suffient factual basis. The article...

On 1 December 2022, a major report on the safety of female journalists was published. It included the finding that 8 out of 10 female journalists in the Netherlands have experienced some form of intimidation, aggression, or threats; and that this was “alarmingly common”. The report was published by PersVeilig - a well-known joint initiative of Dutch journalists and law enforcement, comprised of the Dutch Association of Journalists, Dutch Association of Editors in Chief, the Dutch Police and the Dutch Public Prosecution Service - and aims to strengthen the position of...

On 10 October 2022, the District Court of Midden-Nederland (Rechtbank Midden-Nederland) published a significant judgment on the obligations of broadcasters to provide a right to respond. Notably, the Court refused to prohibit a broadcast over an alleged insufficient opportunity to respond, holding that “rebuttal is not an absolute right”, and the way in which a rebuttal is processed is part of “journalistic freedom”. The case concerned an episode of BOOS, an investigative journalism and consumer protection programme broadcast by the Dutch public broadcaster BNN-VARA....

On 4 October 2022, the District Court of The Hague (Rechtbank Den Haag) delivered an important judgment on whether online platforms can be ordered to remove harmful conspiracy theory content by a local government authority. Notably, the Court refused to order Twitter to remove conspiracy theory content that was “similar” to other content that had been ruled unlawful, finding that it would amount to an impermissible filtering obligation. The case arose in early 2021, when a number of individuals spread a story through Twitter, on the “Bodegraven story”, (“het verhaal...

On 19 July 2022, the Gerechtshof Arnhem-Leeuwarden (Arnhem-Leeuwarden Court of Appeal) delivered an important judgment, upholding an earlier lower-court judgment on the media standards applicable to news and opinion websites operated by public broadcasters (see IRIS 2021-10/21). Notably, the Court upheld important principles on the freedom of public broadcasters to criticise public figures, and refused to order a rectification against a public broadcaster sought by a public figure over various online articles. The case involved a well-known Dutch activist who campaigned against Covid-19 measures...