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The movie “Fitna”, created by the Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders, has given rise to two provisional judgements in the Netherlands. The first judgement, concerning freedom of speech, turned out to be positive for the politician, while the second resulted in a fine, due to intellectual property infringements. On 28 March 2008, the movie “Fitna” was broadcast from the Internet site Liveleak.com. The movie included negative remarks about Islam. The prophet Mohammed was called a “barbarian” and Islam and the Koran were linked with fascism. Before the release of the movie, the Dutch Government...

The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recently published four country reports adopted in its third monitoring cycle of the laws, policies and practices intended to combat racism in the Member States of the Council of Europe. Each of the country reports, which examine the situation in Andorra, Latvia, the Netherlands and Ukraine, contains specific recommendations concerning the media. As in earlier ECRI country reports (see IRIS 2005-7: 3), a number of recommendations are recurrent. For example, national authorities are called upon to encourage media/journalistic initiatives...

In two recent judgments, the European Court of Human Rights has given substantial protection to journalists’ right of non-disclosure of their sources under Article 10 of the Convention. The case of Voskuil v. the Netherlands concerns Mr Voskuil’s allegations that he was denied the right not to disclose his source for two articles he had written for the newspaper Sp!ts and that he was detained for more than two weeks in an attempt to compel him to do so. Voskuil had been summoned to appear as a witness for the defence in the appeal proceedings concerning three individuals accused of...

On 1 January 2008, a film support agreement entered into force between the Amsterdam based Dutch Film Fund (Nederlands Fonds voor de Film), which is under the patronage of the Dutch Ministry of Culture, and the Brussels based Flemish Audiovisual Fund (Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds - VAF) set up by the Government of the Flemish Community. The agreement applies until 31 December 2008, after which the term is automatically extended for one year unless and until either of the contracting parties terminates the co-operation by informing the other party by the end of November at the latest. Article 5.9...

A long-standing dispute, involving several Muslim organisations, over broadcasting time has finally been resolved by the Dutch Media Authority (see IRIS 2007-6: 14). Article 39f of the Dutch Media Act sets out the rules concerning religious broadcasting time and has enabled several different faiths existing in the Netherlands to reach out to their followers by airing programmes by means of allocated broadcasting time. Different organisations representing Dutch Muslims had been vying for air time since 1 September 2005. That date marked the beginning of the Dutch Media Authority’s reshuffling of...