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In February and March 2015, the Flemish Media Regulator issued five decisions with regard to infringements of Article 69 of the Flemish Media Decree. This article requires that commercial communication for sugary confectionary shows an image of a toothbrush in a clear and contrasting manner during the full length of the commercial message, at one tenth of the height of the television picture. This requirement is not imposed by the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, but is a stricter provision adopted by the Flemish legislator. Following the monitoring of several commercial television broadcasting...

During the past months the Flemish Media Regulator has closely supervised compliance with the requirements regarding the broadcasting of sponsoring messages laid down in Articles 90-97 of the Flemish Media Decree. In a series of decisions published at the end of March 2015, the Regulator imposed a fine of EUR 1500 on four regional broadcasters (TV Limburg, Focus TV, ATV, WTV) for infringing Article 96, paragraph 1, which states that newscasts and political information programmes cannot be sponsored. In all cases, the newscasts were accompanied by a message mentioning the clothing sponsor of the...

Having established during its monitoring of Flemish television broadcasts that very short “bumpers” have been increasingly used to indicate advertising breaks, the Flemish Media Regulator issued an opinion on the implementation of the principle related to the distinction between editorial and commercial content. This principle is laid down in Article 79 of the Flemish Media Decree, which implements Article 19 of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. According to Article 79, television advertising must be readily recognisable and distinguishable from editorial content. After consulting with...

In 2009, the Flemish Council of Journalism (Raad voor de Journalistiek), a self-regulatory body that deals with questions and complaints concerning journalistic practice, issued its “decision” on a complaint against a journalist and editor of an online subscription newsletter. The complaint concerned a significant number of articles, which accused the complainant of theft, threats, social fraud and animal cruelty. Aside from the fact that the complaint was upheld due to infringements of the principles of impartial gathering of information, distinguishing between the description of facts and comments...

A highly controversial act has been adopted in Belgium to address sexist gestures and acts in the public space. A prison sentence of up to one year and/or a fine of up to EUR 1000 can be imposed for ‘any public gesture or act, which is obviously intended to express contempt vis-à-vis a person because of his or her sex or, for the same reason, considers a person as inferior or reduces the person to his or her sexual dimension and which results in a serious infringement on the dignity of that person’. The act also amends the Law of 10 May 2007 to combat discrimination between women and men by incorporating...