Tag Archives: Belgium

POLIS: The BNP and Question Time: How Belgian media handles the extreme right

Following reports that the British National Party (BNP) is to be invited on BBC’s Question Time, Dr Bart Cammaerts reflects on how the Belgian media handles far right politics.

[The BBC’s chief political advisor, Ric Bailey, explains the thinking behind the decision in this blog post.]

In Belgium and other European countries far right parties have been a part of the political mainstream for decades, suggests Cammaerts.

Cammaerts comments on the differing media schools of thought when it comes to reporting on far right politics:

  1. these parties should be treated in the same way as other political groups and given the same exposure and attention;
  2. sharing a platform with these groups legitimises their position.

“Journalists should furthermore be very aware of the dangers of legitimizing extreme right discourses when reporting on the extreme right and when interviewing their representatives,” he writes.

“Pluralism should be radical in a democracy, but for vibrant multi-cultural and ethnical democracies to be able to survive, a common ground relating to basic values such as equality, respect, solidarity, difference, etc. is crucial as well. Popper’s paradox of tolerance sums it up pretty neatly, up until what point can intolerance be tolerated before it destroys tolerance all together?”

Full post at this link…

Freelance Unbound: Print and online differences – a view from Belgium

A nice round-up from the Freelance Unbound blog on a post by a Belgian linguistic researcher, Tom Van Hout, about the differences between print and online journalism.

“I like its academic slant (something which often puts me off), as it actually helps to illuminate the murky way that news journalism is constructed and then passed off as something whole and authoritative.”

This quote by Van Hout is picked out: “Online, ‘readers’ can see how the sausage is being made and promptly start making sausages themselves. This inevitably leads to discussions about sausage making.”

The summary and the original post are worth a visit.

Google Ads round-up – the changes explained in links

The latest is from MediaGuardian: ‘Google to host ads from European agencies (March 17)’: “Google is ramping up its efforts to make money from its controversial Google News service by striking deals with eight European news agencies, and launching a contextual ad service to display adverts around their stories.”

Here’s a round-up of the recent coverage of advertising on Google News and other parts of Google, and its impact for journalism. Please do add any good links you’ve spotted in the comments below, or Tweet us via @journalismnews and we’ll include them in the list.

Belgian newspaper group to take European Commission to court again after its first challenge over news aggregator fails

Belgian newspaper group Copiepresse – yes, the one that’s in that legal wrangle with Google – is about to re-enter a copyright battle with a second online publisher – this time it’s the European Commission.

Copiepresse will attempt to sue the EC for a second time after it had its copyright infringement case against the EC’s news aggregation services NewsBrief and NewsExplorer thrown out by a Belgian court.

The group took the case on the same grounds as its Google case, that the use of the material without newspapers’ permission was an infringement of their copyright.

According to Out-Law.com, Belgian press reports said the case was thrown out of the Court of Seizures in Belgium after a report produced for the court backed the Commission and because there was a jurisdictional problem with the case. Iy added that the group would not appeal against the throwing out of the case but would re-submit it to Belgium’s civil court.

Belgian newspapers seeking £39m damages from Google

A group of Belgian newspapers are seeking up to £39m (€49m) in damages from Google for the search giant publishing and storing their content without permission or offering payment.

Last year Google lost a case brought against it by the Copiepresse group – an organisation that represents the French language press in Belgium – forcing it to remove cached versions of newspaper articles and take down content from its Google News service

The organisation’s secretary-general told Bloomberg yesterday it had summoned Google to appear again before a Brussels court so that it could decide on the damages. Copiepresse is seeking between €32.8 and 49.1m.

The damages would be in addition to the €25,000 (£20,000) daily fine imposed on Google by the court for each day it kept Copiepresse material on its site.

Google appealed the original court decision of February 2007, which ruled that it could not claim ‘fair use’ – acceptable under copyright law – for using a lines of text and linking to the original article.

A Google spokesperson told Bloomberg that it was still awaiting the results of its appeal and that it had not received notification from Copiepresse of any new court dates.

NTY: Belgium papers could sue EU for linking to stories

A victory in a European court last year against Google has encouraged newspapers in Belgium to take action against the European Commission over links on two agency sites.

According to the Times, a Brussels court has been asked by a group of French- and German-language newspapers to examine its claim.