In your annual report, you also point out the multiplication of acts targeting press freedom. Is the year 2024 particularly unique in this area?
There have been cases before, notably the attempt by Conner Rousseau (president of the Flemish socialists, Editor’s note) to ban the publication of an article concerning him. So attacking the press is not something new. What was rather unusual last year was that there were several cases in a very short period of time. Paradoxically, the press ultimately spoke very little about it, perhaps for fear of being considered a little too corporatist. But we would like to return to these cases since attacking press freedom means attacking human rights.
gull“We have still had two cases where ministers in office attacked the media head-on, and that is unprecedented. We are not talking about criticism, but rather direct attacks with the aim of censoring an article. This was the case when the Minister of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), ensured that an article was not published in a media It is contrary to freedom of the press and the simple fact of trying (the. procedure failed, Editor’s note), this is very worrying, especially since censorship is prohibited by the Constitution.”
Where do these pressures that you point out come from?
From several places, but those that concern us come from politicians. Because we still had two cases where ministers in office attacked the media head-on, and that is unprecedented. We are not talking about criticism, but rather direct attacks with the aim of censoring an article. This was the case when the Minister of the Interior, Annelies Verlinden (CD&V), ensured that an article did not appear in a media outlet. This is contrary to freedom of the press and the simple fact of trying (the procedure failed, Editor’s note) is very worrying, especially since censorship is prohibited by the Constitution. There is also this case between RTBF and bailiffs where the latter considered that RTBF was a company and that the content it could broadcast against other companies could be assimilated to an unfair commercial practice. . Following this reasoning means considering that the media are businesses like any other, to the detriment of journalists’ duty to inform and citizens’ right to information. Can you imagine the gravity of such a situation? The legislation allows, when there are mistakes, to appeal to justice. But prior censorship is no.
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Do you have any clues that might explain why these attempts to muzzle the press seem to be accelerating?
I can’t help but make a connection with the first presidency of Donald Trump where there was a sort of global turning point regarding “fake news”, coupled with an incessant bashing against the media in order to circumvent them. There has been no direct impact in Belgium, but this contributes to a climate where people say that there is an interest in turning away from the traditional press, while recurrently targeting pseudo-bias. journalists who would be linked to power. See the reversals of X (former Twitter) and Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc.) who no longer want to moderate their content, leaving the door open to disinformation. We are in a period where the search for facts is completely muddled. It is not for nothing that disinformation is considered a hybrid threat to democracies. The more we manage to confuse the messages, the less resilient a democracy will be. And we come back to the importance for politicians to ensure that they do not spread fake news. The gesture seems innocuous and ineffective, whereas it will take miles of articles from journalists and reactions from organizations like ours to rehabilitate the facts. It’s a never-ending battle, but it’s impossible not to fight it.
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