Summary
In a Chamber judgment in the case of M.L.
and W.W. v. Germany (application nos. 60798/10 and 65599/10) (a judgment
available at present only in French), the European Court of Human Rights has held,
unanimously, that there had been no violation of Article 8 (right to respect
for private life) of the ECHR where the Federal Court of Justice refused to
issue an injunction prohibiting three different media from continuing to allow
Internet users access to documentation concerning the applicants’ conviction
for the murder of a famous actor and mentioning their names in full. The Court
shared the findings of the German Federal Court, which had reiterated that the
media had the task of participating in the creation of democratic opinion, by
making available to the public old news items that had been preserved in their
archives.
The Court reiterated that the approach to covering a given
subject was a matter of journalistic freedom and that Article 10 of the
Convention left it to journalists to decide what details ought to be published,
provided that these decisions corresponded to the profession’s ethical norms.
The inclusion in a report of individualised information, such as the full name
of the person in question, was an important aspect of press work, especially
when reporting on criminal proceedings which had attracted considerable
attention that remained undiminished with the passage of time.
The Court noted that during their most recent request to
reopen proceedings in 2004, M.L. and W.W. had themselves contacted the press,
transmitting a number of documents while inviting journalists to keep the
public informed. This attitude put a different perspective on their hope of
obtaining anonymity in the reports, or on the right to be forgotten online.
Having regard to the margin of appreciation left to the
national authorities when weighing up divergent interests, the importance of
maintaining the accessibility of press reports which had been recognised as
lawful, and the applicants’ conduct vis-à-vis the press, the Court considered
that there were no substantial grounds for it to substitute its view for that
of the Federal Court of Justice.
Facts
The applicants, M.L. and W.W., who are half-brothers, are
German nationals who were born in 1953 and 1954 and live in Munich and Erding
(Germany) respectively. In May 1993 M.L. and W.W. were convicted of murdering a
very popular actor, W.S., and sentenced to life imprisonment by the domestic
courts. They were released on probation in August 2007 and January 2008
respectively.
In 2007 the applicants brought proceedings against the radio
station Deutschlandradio in the Hamburg Regional Court, requesting anonymity of
the personal data in the documentation on them which had appeared on the
station’s Internet site. In two judgments of 29 February 2008 the Hamburg
Regional Court granted the applicants’ requests, considering in particular that
their interest in no longer being confronted with their past actions so long
after their conviction prevailed over the public interest in being informed.
The Court of Appeal upheld those judgments. The Federal Court of Justice quashed
the decisions on the grounds that the Court of Appeal had not taken sufficient
account of the radio station’s right to freedom of expression and, with regard
to its mission, the public’s interest in being informed. In July 2010 the
Federal Constitutional Court decided not to entertain constitutional appeals
lodged by the applicants.
A second and third set of proceedings on similar grounds
brought against the weekly magazine Der
Spiegel and the daily newspaper Mannheimer
Morgen respectively were dealt with under the same procedure and ended with
the same conclusions by the courts.
The complaint
Relying on Article 8 (right to respect for private life),
the applicants complained about the refusal by the Federal Court of Justice to
issue an injunction prohibiting the defendant media from keeping on their
Internet portal the transcript of a radio programme by Deutschlandfunk and articles by Der
Spiegel or the Mannheimer Morgen
about their criminal trial and their conviction for murder. They complained of
an infringement of their right to respect for their private life.
Decision
Article 8
The Court noted that the applications required an
examination of the fair balance that had to be struck between the applicants’
right to respect for their private life, guaranteed under Article 8 of the
Convention, and the right of the radio station and press to freedom of expression
and the public’s right to be informed, guaranteed under Article 10.
The Court noted that it was primarily on account of search
engines that the information made available by the media could be obtained
easily by Internet users. However, the interference complained of by the
applicants resulted from the decision by the media concerned to publish and
conserve this material on their websites; the search engines merely amplified
the scope of the interference.
The Court observed that the Federal Court of Justice, while
recognising that M.L. and W.W. had a considerable interest in no longer being
confronted with their convictions, had emphasised that the public had an
interest in being informed about a topical event, and also in being able to
conduct research into past events. The Federal Court had also reiterated that
one of the media’s tasks was to participate in creating democratic opinion, by
making available to the public old news items that were preserved in their
archives. The Court agreed entirely with this conclusion.
The Federal Court of Justice had referred to the risk that a
decision to grant the requests to remove identifying elements from the reports
could have a chilling effect on the press’s freedom of expression. An
obligation to examine the lawfulness of a given news report following a request
from the individual concerned entailed the risk that the press would abstain
from putting their archives online or that they would omit individualised
information in news reports that could subsequently give rise to such requests.
The rights of a person who had been the subject of an internet publication had
to be balanced against the public’s right to be informed about past events and
contemporary history, particularly using digital press archives. In so far as
M.L. and W.W. were not asking for the removal of the reports in question, but
only that they be anonymised, the Court noted that rendering material anonymous
was a less restrictive measure in terms of press freedom than the removal of an
entire article. However, it reiterated that the approach to covering a given
subject was a matter of journalistic freedom and that Article 10 of the
Convention left it to journalists to decide what details ought to be published,
provided that these decisions corresponded to the profession’s ethical and
deontological norms. In consequence, the Court considered that the inclusion in
a news report of individualised information, such as the full name of the
person concerned, was an important aspect of the press’s work, especially when
reporting on criminal proceedings which had attracted considerable attention.
The Court concluded that the availability of the impugned
reports on the media’s websites at the time that the applications were lodged
by M.L. and W.W. continued to contribute to a debate of general interest which
had not been diminished by the passage of time.
As to how well known the applicants were, the Court observed
that they were not simply private individuals who were unknown to the public at
the time their request for anonymity was made. The reports in question
concerned either the conduct of their criminal trial, or one of their requests
for the reopening of that trial, and thus constituted information capable of
contributing to a debate in a democratic society.
As to M.L.’s and W.W.’s conduct since their conviction, the
Court observed that the applicants had lodged every possible judicial appeal to
obtain the reopening of the criminal proceedings against them. During their
most recent request to reopen proceedings in 2004, M.L. and W.W. had contacted
the press, transmitting a number of documents while inviting journalists to
keep the public informed. The Court noted that as a result of the applicants’
conduct vis-à-vis the press, less weight was to be attached to their interest
in no longer being confronted with their convictions through the medium of
archived material on the internet. Their legitimate hope of obtaining anonymity
in the reports, or even a right to be forgotten online, had thus been very
limited.
With regard to the content and form of the contested
documentation, the Court, like the Federal Court of Justice, considered that it
concerned texts which described a judicial decision in an objective manner, the
original truthfulness or lawfulness of which had never been challenged.
Equally, the articles in Der Spiegel
did not reflect a wish to denigrate M.L. and W.W. or to harm their reputation.
With regard to the dissemination of the contested
publications, the Court followed the findings of the Federal Court of Justice,
which had noted that this dissemination was limited in scope, especially as
some of the material was subject to restrictions such as paid access or a
subscription. Lastly, the Court noted that M.L. and W.W. had provided no
information about any attempts made by them to contact search-engine operators
with a view to making it harder to trace information about them.
In conclusion, having regard to the margin of appreciation
left to the national authorities when weighing up divergent interests, the
importance of maintaining the accessibility of news reports which had been
acknowledged to be lawful, and the applicants’ conduct vis-à-vis the press, the
Court considered that there were no substantial grounds for it to substitute its
view for that of the Federal Court of Justice. The Court considered that the
Federal Court had not failed to comply with the German State’s positive
obligations to protect the applicants’ right to respect for their private life
and held that there had been no violation of Article 8.
