JOURNALISM – That is an article that provokes an outcry from nearly all newsrooms. In a column published by The worldTuesday, November 10, a number of journalists’ societies (SDJ) are anxious about article 24 of the invoice “referring to world safety”, which might threaten the liberty to tell.
The text, which can be mentioned on November 17 on the Nationwide Meeting, proposes to punish one yr in jail and a superb of 45,000 euros for the dissemination, by any means, of “the picture of the face or some other aspect of identification ”- excluding the registration quantity, often called“ RIO ”- of a police officer or a gendarme in intervention, when the aim of this dissemination is“ that his bodily or psychological integrity be violated ”.
As you possibly can see within the video on the prime of the article, Pierre Tremblay, journalist at HuffPost, explains why this provision may complicate his job as a reporter, in addition to the correct for each citizen to movie the police in motion.
This text leaves the de facto obligation hanging, no less than if we need to keep away from any threat of authorized motion, of blurring the faces of the police. A constraint which requires time, technical means and a sure experience, which may discourage or forestall sure videographers, amateurs or professionals, from broadcasting delicate photographs, particularly stay.
Blurring or not blurring?
If this system doesn’t seem within the textual content and that it seems rejected by the deputies of the majority, Inside Minister Gérald Darmanin acknowledged his choice for blurring.
“If you happen to see an issue, you should have the correct to movie it and ship it to the general public prosecutor. If you wish to broadcast it on the web in a wild method, you’ll have to blur the faces ”, he mentioned on France Data, Friday 13 November.
After the debates of the Legislation Fee, the LREM co-rapporteurs Jean-Michel Fauvergue and Alice Thourot affirm of their report “ easy blurring of the faces or a cropping of the picture respects the prescriptions of the legislation”.
In a discover revealed on November 5, the Defender of Rights Claire Hédon was also worried about “considerable risks” on the liberty to tell that this invoice suggests. It recollects the legitimacy of photographs of police interventions and their significance to “democratic functioning”.
For his or her half, the rapporteurs of the invoice be certain that it’s merely a query of repressing videographers with malicious intentions and under no circumstances of limiting the liberty of motion of journalists. “There is no such thing as a query of stopping journalists from working, or of infringing on the residents’ proper to info,” mentioned Alice Thourot in an interview with BFMTV.
See additionally on The HuffPost: Like Camélia Jordana, “not protected” within the face of the police? We requested the query within the suburbs