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According to a decision of the Niedersächsische Oberverwaltungsgericht (Lower Saxony Higher Administrative Court - OVG) in Lüneburg, the television broadcaster RTL breached human dignity with a report on the ill-treatment of a helpless old man (case no. 10 LA 101/07). The Verwaltungsgericht Hannover (Hanover Administrative Court) had previously upheld a decision taken by the Niedersächsische Landesmedienanstalt (Lower Saxony State Media Authority - NLM) against RTL due to a breach of human dignity (see IRIS 2007-3: 11). During various news and magazine programmes on 1 December 2004, RTL had broadcast...

In a decision issued at the end of 2008, the Ústavní soud (Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic) ruled that measures taken by the Broadcasting Council to protect young people had not limited the freedom of speech in the media. In the past, the Broadcasting Council has frequently had to deal with the principles of youth protection on television (particularly "Big Brother"-type formats) and imposed fines on the broadcasters of such programmes. The broadcasters appealed against these fines. The Městský soud v Praze (Prague Municipal Court) rejected some of the complaints and upheld the fines....

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...

The Parliament of the Republic of Slovenia passed into law the new Penal Code (Kazenski zakonik KZ-1) on 20 May 2008, which came into force on 1 November 2008. The new provision on pornography, child pornography, and sexual exploitation of children in commercial sex performances (Article no. 176) changes substantially the previous legislative concepts in this field. The most outstanding amendment of the provision refers to the juridical treatment of the possession of child pornography. Possession is now punishable without being conditional on the intention of the possessor to produce and/or disseminate...

The Broadcasting Authority had, in 2007, amended its Requirements as to Standards and Practice Applicable to Participation in Media Programmes of Vulnerable Persons so as to prohibit, inter alia, programmes aimed at establishing the identity of the natural parents of children, including adopted ones. Moreover, programmes or parts thereof relating to adoption have to be aired after the 9 p.m. watershed. The same applies to programme promotions concerning adoptions. Since then, the legislator has taken action to tighten the provisions of the Civil Code on adoption. Article 128A of the Civil Code...