In a unanimous decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has held that the German Federal Court of Justice did not violate the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by allowing three media outlets to continue to give Internet users access to documentation that mentioned the full names of the applicants, who have been convicted of the murder of a famous actor.

Media and democratic debate

The ECtHR's decision in the case M.L. and W.W. v. Germany, issued on 28 June, concerned a possible violation of Article 8 of the ECHR, which grants the right to respect for private life.

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, in part by making available to the public old news items that had been preserved in their archives.

The ECtHR 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.

Including the full name of a person in an article about them is important, the Court held, especially when reporting on criminal proceedings that had attracted considerable attention and remained undiminished with the passage of time.

Applicants' attitude

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.

The importance of maintaining the accessibility of press reports that had been recognized as lawful, and the applicants’ conduct vis-à-vis the press in this particular case, the court considered that there were no substantial grounds for it to substitute its view for that of the Federal Court of Justice.