Search results : 240

On 14 June 2007, the Flemish Council for Journalism has made clear that an undercover operation by a journalist, with the risk of endangering him or herself and others, can only be accepted under very strict conditions. The Council for Journalism formulated its advisory opinion after the Association of Professional Journalists (VVJ) had raised four questions before the Council with regard to a TV programme broadcast on VTM, the commercial TV channel with the largest audience in the Flemish Community. On 27 March 2006, VTM broadcast a programme showing how a journalist had easily checked in at the...

In a decision of 3 April 2007, the Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Regulator for the Media) expresses the opinion that an episode of "Sex & the City", broadcast by Vijf TV SBS Belgium between 19:15h and 19:45h has violated Article 96 § 1 of the Broadcasting Act (Decreten betreffende de radio-omroep en de televisie, Mediadecreet). This article transposes Article 22 of the TVWF Directive into the Flemish Broadcasting Act, prohibiting the broadcasting of programmes that could harm the physical, mental or moral development of minors, unless the choice of the time of transmission, or technical...

On 8 February 2007, the Flemish Council for Journalism declared two complaints by the public prosecutor of Antwerp against two newspapers to be ill-founded. Referring to its Embargorichtlijn (Embargo directive) of 10 July 2003, the Council stated that the public prosecutor’s office cannot unilaterally impose restrictions on journalistic coverage of a judicial reconstruction of a murder case, unless such an embargo is pertinently motivated and the editors-in-chief of the media have been properly informed. The case concerns the judicial reconstruction of a triple murder case, which attracted massive...

On 5 September 2006, the presiding judge at the court of first instance in Brussels, where termination proceedings were brought on the basis of the Act of 30 June 1994 on copyright and neighbouring rights, had upheld the case of the company Copiepresse, responsible for the collective management of the copyright held by Belgian journalists. The judge had considered that, by using articles and photographs that had appeared in the Belgian press without first obtaining authorisation, Google - and more particularly its ‘Google News’ service and its cache sites - was violating the copyright of journalists....

On 24 January 2007, the Flemish Parliament approved new modifications of the Decreten betreffende de radio-omroep en de televisie (Audiovisual Media Decree 2005) . Aside from broadening the possibilities for alliances between regional and national private radio stations and abolishing some administrative obligations for private radio and television broadcasters, the new provisions deregulate some of the restrictions and limitations that commercial broadcasters have had to observe since 1991 regarding advertising and sponsoring. In essence, the Flemish Community is abandoning its policy of imposing...