Royal Dutch Pictures Censorship

UPDATE: The Dutch royal family wants the court to accord a fine of 25,000 to 250,000 euros for each time the AP violates the “media code” (see below)

The French based organisation Reporters Sans Frontières (Reporters Without Borders) strongly condemns the court injunction which Dutch Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife, Princess Maxima, have sought against the US news agency, the Associated Press, to force it to stop distributing recent photos of them and their five-year-old daughter, Princess Amalia, at an Argentine ski resort.

Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported the AP said the pictures were taken from a “respectful” distance, and that the royal family members are public figures. AP staff photographer Natacha Pisarenko happened to be at the ski resort, the AP told the newspaper. Three other photographs were taken by a local photographer.

“We fully support the Associated Press’s freedom to cover and photograph any subject it considers newsworthy,” RSF said. “Members of the Dutch royal family are public figures of the kind that are often the subject of photo stories in international magazines. Their privacy must obviously be respected but Prince Willem-Alexander and his family were in a public ski resort abroad and the photos did absolutely no harm to their honour or reputation. There are no grounds for banning them.”

“We are also very concerned about the demands been made in addition to a ban on the offending photos. The royal family wants the Associated Press to undertake to henceforth only photograph them at official functions. If the Dutch courts comply with this request, it will limit the press to being promotional agencies that just publish photos selected for them. This would be censorship pure and simple, and would give other heads of states the opportunity to demand similar treatment.”

Most of the Dutch news media have freely chosen not to publish photos of the royal family when they are not performing official functions “but the same does not necessarily apply to international media, which are free to tackle this subject from other angles and which could be interested in photos of the royal family that do not come from its protocol services”, RSF says.

Several Dutch newspapers have published some of these AP-pictures. They all ´pleaded guilty´ after they were asked to withdraw the photos from circulation. AP is the only media organisation not to have complied with this request. A royal family spokesman said the injunction request would be withdrawn if the news agency complied before 14 August, when a court is due to examine it.

The so called media code was published in 2005 by the Dutch government information agency RVD (which takes care of all communication concerning the royal family) and more or less restricts photo opportunities for official media to certain orchestrated moments in the year. If, according to a member of the royal family, one of the provisions of the code is violated by a member of the press, then “appropriate measures can be taken”.

Crown Prince Willem-Alexander is the eldest son of the current Dutch monarch, Queen Beatrix and is the heir to the Dutch throne. Like the United Kingdom, the Dutch monarchy is a constitutional monarchy. Princess Maxima is queen-to-be.