European Court of Human Rights : Société Éditrice de Mediapart and others v. France

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has delivered a judgment on the rights and duties and responsibilities of journalists and online media when publishing illegal recordings containing private and intimate information. The case concerns the judicial orders requiring the news website Mediapart to remove transcripts and tapes of conversations that had been illegally recorded at the home of Ms Bettencourt, the principal shareholder of the L’Oréal group. The ECtHR found the exposure of the illegal recordings to be of such a serious nature that the judicial orders to remove them from the news website did not breach the right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)