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The Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Regulator for the Media — VRM) released its annual report on media concentration in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium) in November 2022. The report first discusses the media sector generally. The most important finding regarding the television sector is that the traditional role of broadcasters as content aggregators and curators is increasingly under pressure in a modern media landscape where media is consumed both in a linear and non-linear way. It points to service distributors and international actors who act increasingly as...

On 22 November 2022, the Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Media Regulator — VRM) issued, for the first time, warnings to influencers for violating the rules on commercial communication under the Flemish Media Decree (Article 53). With the transposition, in 2021, of the revised Audiovisual Media Services Directive into the Flemish Media Decree, channels and profiles on platform services such as YouTube, Instagram and Tiktok can be considered audiovisual media services or broadcasting services (as per Article 2, 26° of the Flemish Media Decree). This means that content creators,...

On 17 November 2022, the Belgian Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (regulatory authority for the audiovisual sector of the French-speaking Community of Belgium – CSA) published the results of its second study entitled Médias: Attitudes et Perceptions (Media: Attitudes and Perceptions – MAP). Like the first edition published in 2020 (based on 2019 data), the study analyses how the emergence of new forms of audiovisual consumption is changing television usage. It updates the data previously collected and draws comparisons with the results of the previous study. In...

For the second time, the public broadcasting organisation of the French Community in Belgium (Radio-télévision belge de la communauté française — RTBF) successfully invoked its right to freedom of expression before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) (see also IRIS 2011-6/1). In view of the importance of the media in a democratic society, and of the domestic authorities’ limited margin of appreciation in respect of a television programme about a subject of considerable public interest, the ECtHR found that the Belgian courts had not balanced in a pertinent...

A judgment of the Antwerp Court of Appeal of 9 June 2022 offers strong support for investigative journalism on issues of public interest, while at the same time acknowledging the detrimental impact of SLAPPs (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation). The case concerned a complaint by project developer Erik Van der Paal against a journalist of the news site Apache and its chief editor. The chief editor, Karl van den Broeck, and Apache journalist Stef Arends were accused of having stalked Erik Van der Paal of the NV Land Invest Group (Section 422bis Criminal Code) and of violating the...