EU Censorship News

Germany's media regulator has revised its code on reporting whether crime suspects belong to an ethnic or religious group.

The German Press Council, a voluntary, industry-run body, says information about a person's ethnicity shouldn't be published unless there is a justified public interest in doing so. Previous guidance said such details should only be published if there was a link between a person's ethnicity or religion and the crime.

Numerous German media outlets complained that the old code was hard to interpret during a breaking news situation and that withholding such information left readers searching for it on questionable social media sites and stirred conspiracy theories of media cover-ups of migrant crimes.

Members of the European Parliament have approved extraordinary measures to censor speakers accused of hate speech.

MEPs granted the parliament's president authority to pull the plug on live broadcasts of parliamentary debate deemed to include racist speech and to purge any such material from online records.

Inevitably the rules are vaguely worded and will be manipulated or used as a tool of censorship. Tom Weingaertner, president of the Brussels-based International Press Association commented:

This undermines the reliability of the Parliament's archives at a moment where the suspicion of 'fake news' and manipulation threatens the credibility of the media and the politicians.

However the censorship has some British support. Richard Corbett, a Labour MEP who backed the rule said:

There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate,

What if this became not isolated incidents, but specific, where people could say: 'Hey, this is a fantastic platform. It's broad, it's live-streamed. It can be recorded and repeated. Let's use it for something more vociferous, more spectacular

Rule 165 of the parliament's rules of procedure allows the chair of debates to halt the live broadcast in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a member. The would also be a fine for transgressors of around 9,000 euros.

The new rule, which was not made public by the assemble until it was reported by Spain's La Vanguardia newspaper, offending material could be deleted from the audiovisual record of proceedings, meaning citizens would never know it happened unless reporters were in the room.

Weingaertner said the IPA was never consulted on that.

Germany has decided to abolish a law which censors criticism of foreign leaders.

After the spectacular attempt at censorship by Turkey's president Erdogan, international heads of state will no longer be able to ask the German government to prosecute people deemed to have offended them under an obscure passage of German law.

Comic Jan Boehmermann sparked a diplomatic row between Ankara and Berlin when his insulting and satircal poem aired on German television last March. It described Erdogan as stupid, cowardly and uptight before descending into sexual references and language later described by judges in Hamburg as abusive and libellous content . The outraged Turkish leader filed a complaint with German prosecutors on the basis of lese majeste.

German ministers have now agreed to scrap a line of the penal code known as lese majeste , which prohibits insulting the representatives of international governments. Justice Minister Heiko Maas called the law outdated and unnecessary .

The idea of lese majesty arose in an era long gone by. It no longer belongs in our criminal law.

The Bundestag lower house still has to confirm the law change.

Insulted foreign leaders can still pursue their own libel and defamation cases, in the same way as anyone else.

French authorities ordered the blockage or removal of more than 2,700 websites in 2016, Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux announced. He said that his government has requested blocks for 834 websites and that 1,929 more be pulled from search engines' results as part of the fight against child pornographic and terrorist content. He said:

To face an extremely serious terror threat, we've given ourselves unprecedented means to reinforce the efficacy of our actions.

Perhaps to obscure censorship details, Le Roux unhelpfully didn't detail any stats on what type of websites were blocked.

French authorities can block sites without a judge's order under a 2011 law that was brought into effect in after jihadist attacks killed 17 people at a satirical magazine and a kosher supermarket.