Search results : 1513

The BBC Trust has decided not to overrule the decision of the Corporation’s Director-General refusing to broadcast an appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee (representing 13 leading UK aid agencies) seeking donations for humanitarian relief for the residents of Gaza. The appeal was broadcast by the other public service broadcasters (though not by Sky). The Director-General had argued that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is deeply divisive and that the suffering of civilians plays a central part in the political case each side makes in the “court of world opinion”. It was thus impossible...

The Act “on audiovisual communication and the new public television service” and the Implementing Act on the appointment of the chairmen of the public-sector audiovisual companies were gazetted on 7 March 2009. A few days earlier, the Constitutional Council, in response to an application by opposition MPs, had validated all the key measures of the reform, including the abolition of advertising on the public-sector channels, their financing, and - more controversially - the appointment of the chairmen of the public-sector audiovisual companies (France Télévisions, Radio France and the company responsible...

The Media Commission of the Flemish Parliament has accepted an important modification to the draft of the new Media Decree (see IRIS 2009-2: 8). In pursuance of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the case of TV Vest SA and Rogaland Pensjonistparti v Norway (see IRIS 2009-3: 2), the Commission has approved a provision allowing paid political advertising on radio and television in pre-election time (Article 47). The provision’s viability, however, depends on a double condition: approval in the plenary session of the Flemish Parliament and modification of the federal law on election expenditure...

The bill - examined at length and copiously amended at its first reading in the National Assembly and the Senate - passed through the joint mixed committee at the end of January. As a result of this examination, provided for in the urgent procedure adopted by the Government for passing the Act, the bill was ratified in the form it was submitted to the global vote of each assembly in the course of the following days. The package was finally adopted on 4 February 2009. Two types of appeal have already been lodged against the texts adopted. Firstly, opposition members of the Senate have called on...

In December 2008, the Vlaamse Regulator voor de Media (Flemish Regulator for the Media - monitoring and enforcement of media regulation) issued several interesting decisions. Two of them will be addressed below. Firstly, the Algemene Kamer (General Chamber) condemned the commercial broadcasting corporation SBS Belgium for a triple breach of the so-called “20 minutes rule” during the broadcasting of the programme “Lost”. This rule, described in Article 101 § 5 of the Omroepdecreet (Flemish Decree on Radio-broadcasting and Television), requires a period of at least twenty minutes to intervene between...