Dutch Newspaper De Volkskrant Can Keep Negative Articles in Internet Archive
In a
judgment of 31 March 2010 the Court of
Amsterdam ruled that de Volkskrant need not delete
articles about Eric Luzac, the founder of the Luzac schools,
from the Internet or from its archive. In the period 2002-2005
de Volkskrant had published a number of critical articles about
malpractices in companies in which Luzac was involved. Through
the companies, nurses from the Philippines were recruited for
work in the Netherlands.
Luzac had initiated proceedings on the merits against de Volkskrant
because in his view the publications were still causing him
problems. Luzac had not argued that the articles themselves were
unlawful, but that his honor and reputation were disproportionally
affected because the articles are still available in the archive of
de Volkskrant and on the Internet and pop up in Google when his
name is searched for. Luzac claimed that he was not able to get
funding for a new company because in the articles he is depicted as
an unreliable person. According to Luzac, de Volkskrant had been
sufficiently able to make use of its right to freedom of expression
in the years during which the articles had been online.
The Court emphasized that the media's primary role is not
only that of being public watchdogs: "(…) an important
secondary role is making news available in archives. An obligation
to remove the articles, which in themselves are lawful, solely
because of a negative undertone, is not very consistent therewith.
In that case the archives would not be a reliable witness of the
past anymore." Luzac's interest had to give way to de
Volkskrant's interest and the social interest in reliable news
archives.
These are the first proceedings on the merits in which a
decision is given on the question of whether news reports must be
removed from an on-line archive because they are harmful to a
person mentioned in those reports. At the same time, Luzac
lost similar proceedings on the merits
against broadcasting corporation VPRO about the radio program
Argos, which broadcasts can still be consulted via
www.deochtenden.nl.
Recently, a judgment in preliminary relief proceedings was
already rendered in which the integrity of an on-line archive
prevailed over the honor and reputation of a person who was put in
a bad light. This case concerned an article on the website of the
newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad that was harmful to a former employee
of the Eindhoven University of Technology. The judge in preliminary
relief proceedings then also decided that the interest of the
former employee had to give way to the interests of the Eindhovens
Dagblad and the interest of a complete news archive. Media Report
reported on this case
here. Thus far, Dutch case law thus seems to
point to a consistent rule, which gives priority to the
completeness and integrity of news archives.
See reports about the Luzac/de Volkskrant judgment in de Volkskrant
of 1 April 2010
here.
De Volkskrant was represented by
Jens van den Brink of Kennedy Van der
Laan.