Belgium: : Brussels Court of Appeal Confirms Flemish Council of Journalism May Issue “Decisions” Concerning Non-Professional Journalists

• Autores: Eva Lievens
• Localización: IRIS: Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory, ISSN-e 1023-8565, Nº. 2, 2015, págs. 4-5
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 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 and respect for dignity and privacy, an interesting element concerned the claim of the journalist in casu that the Council of Journalism was not competent to issue a decision with regard to his practices, given that he is not a professional journalist and not a member of the Flemish journalists association. Although the Council of Journalism refuted this claim, the journalist had already launched a request in court to prohibit the publication of the decision on the website of the Council, which was granted in June 2009. Five years later, on 28 October 2014, the Brussels Court of Appeal issued its decision on the merits of the case.