Search results : 1106

The French national press has just published a judgment delivered by the administrative court in July 2011 in a case in which the national channel TF1 was claiming the repayment of the tax on television services it had paid between June 2004 and April 2006 on the basis of Article 302 bis KB of the General Tax Code, according to which “there shall be instituted a tax payable by every operator of a television service received in France (…) which, in the course of the previous calendar year, has programmed one or more cinematographic works eligible for aid from the special allocation account (…) entitled...

On 28 February 2012 the Court of Cassation delivered a judgment that attracted much attention in the legal saga over disputed reporting on France 2. It will be remembered (the images were seen all over the world) that in September 2000 the channel broadcast a report with comments by its permanent correspondent in the Middle East on clashes between Palestinians and Israelis in the Gaza Strip. The report showed a Palestinian trying to protect his child, Mohammed al-Dura, from shooting that, according to commentators, was coming from Israeli positions, and that fatally wounded the child. Four years...

Among the “Sundry Provisions” contained in Act No. 2012-158 of 1 February 2012 aimed at strengthening the sport ethic and the rights of sportsmen and -women, the audiovisual regulatory authority (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA), has been entrusted with laying down the way in which the “brief extracts” of sports competitions mentioned in Article L. 331-5 of the Sport Code may be broadcast, following consulting France’s National Olympic and Sports Committee and the organisers of the sports events referred to in Article L. 331-5. Since 1984, in the name of the public’s right to information,...

On 13 January 2012 the audiovisual regulatory authority (Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel - CSA) announced that it had instructed the digital TV channel Direct Star to stop broadcasting a disputed advertisement, on the basis of Article 14 of the Act of 30 September 1986 (as amended) and the provisions of the first paragraph of Article L. 52-1 of the Electoral Code prohibiting political advertising. The CSA had noted that a message in favour of the Parti Contre le Cancer had been broadcast on the channel over a period of about ten days last October. The spot featured a famous professor of medicine...

On 26 January the regional court in Lille delivered its judgment in the high-profile case of the documentary entitled Le Mur, which denounces the treatment of autism by psychoanalysis. Three psychoanalysts had given their authorisation for their images and voices to be used after they were filmed and interviewed for the production of a three-part documentary film. They complained that their interviews had been edited and used in a distorted form in order to make a biased 52-minute film that was eventually called Le Mur and subtitled La psychanalyse à l’épreuve de l’autisme and made available on...