SPECIAL COLLECTION OF THE CASE LAW ON FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Court reversed the lower court’s decision and granted an anonymity order to a British national who was compulsorily admitted in a psychiatric hospital and had had his request for unescorted community leave turned down by the UK Secretary of State. The patient had applied for judicial review before the High Court and the hospital’s clinician responsible for the patient had requested the court to issue an anonymity order. The Court ordered the identity of the hospital and its staff to remain anonymous, but it refused to conceal the patient’s identity on the ground that his previous proceedings were publicly available. The UK Supreme Court held that whether an anonymity order related to legal proceedings of a mental patient is necessary must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Yet “[t]he public’s right to know has to be balanced against the potential harm, not only to this patient, but to all the others whose treatment could be affected by the risk of exposure.” (R. v. Secretary of State, [2016] UKSC 2, para. 36.) With respect to the patient in the present case, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision, finding it necessary to preserve his identity as well. The Court was of the opinion that the disclosure of his identity could jeopardize his treatment and re-integration into the community. More info here. ix. Publication of images of a public official ECtHR: In the case of Alpha Doryforiki v. Greece (2018), the Grand Chamber of the ECtHR found that the Greek Courts had violated the applicant TV broadcaster’s freedom of expression by imposing sanctions on the applicant for the broadcast of a secretly filmed video of a public official in a public place. However, the Court held that there had been no violation in respect of two further videos that had been secretly filmed on private premises. The videos showed, respectively, a parliamentary deputy who was also chairman of the inter-party committee on electronic gambling, entering a gambling arcade and playing on two machines; a meeting between the deputy and associates of the television host during which the first video was shown to the deputy; and a meeting between the deputy and the host in the latter’s office. The Greek Supreme court upheld the decision of the National Radio and Television Council which had fined the applicant 200,000 euros and ordered it to broadcast the Council’s full decision on its main news. The ECtHR reasoned that in balancing the competing rights of privacy, Article 8, and freedom of expression, Article 10, the Greek courts had not taken into account the fact that the first video was not recorded on private premises and that the interference with the official’s privacy rights under Article 8 was therefore significantly less serious than the interference occasioned by the second two videos, where the Greek courts had struck a fair balance between the competing rights taking into account the way the information was obtained, and the journalistic duties and obligations of the applicant company. More info here. Germany: In the case of Wowereit v. Axel Springer SE (2016), the Supreme Court of Appeal in Germany (Bundesgerichtshof) overruled the lower courts’ finding that a newspaper had violated the personality rights of the Mayor of Berlin by publishing photographs of him having drinks on the eve of a significant parliamentary vote on his competence. The Supreme Court of Appeal found that the publisher of the German newspaper BILD-Zeitung, which is part of the publishing house Axel Springer SE, was justified in publishing the photographs as they were published in the context of a political event and, therefore, contributed to a story of public interest. In reaching this conclusion, the Supreme Court of Appeal reasoned that the photograph provided the public with 32