The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate has imposed fines of tens of thousands of euros on several Dutch media for their reporting on GLP1 medicines Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, the Financieele Dagblad reported. NRC, the Volkskrant, AD, and the Telegraaf confirmed to the newspaper that they have received fines.

DPG Media was fined €51,000 for articles in the Volkskrant and AD. Mediahuis received fines for articles in NRC and De Telegraaf.

The Volkskrant fine was for a news article on a study from Nature regarding weight loss products. Based on the Nature study, the newspaper wrote that researchers found indications that medicines like Ozempic had more health benefits than were known at the time. The article also focused on the medicines’ side effects. The articles in the other newspapers had a similar tone.

Volkskrant chief editor Pieter Klok considers the fine censorship. “I don’t think we have ever experienced anything like this in the history of the newspaper,” Klok told FD. “It is unprecedented and incomprehensible. The only way to avoid such fines is to stop writing about the rise of weight-loss drugs. That is simply censorship.”

“We have a science desk that informs the public about how scientists think about new medication and what the side effects are,” NRC deputy editor-in-chief Lucas Brouwers told FD. “It is very important that we do that. I find it quite bizarre that we have to pay a fine for it.”

The Dutch Association for Journalists (NVJ) spoke of an “alarming development” that could impact journalists’ work. “Journalists feel inhibited from writing articles by these serious fines, which threatens to lead to self-censorship regarding reporting on medicines,” NVJ general secretary Thomas Bruning told FD. “This is a very negative development that we wish to discuss with the Inspectorate and certainly support an appeal against a court ruling.”

Bruning stressed that journalists’ primary goal is “truly to inform the public properly.” The NVJ is consulting with chief editors and the Press Freedom Fund regarding the matter.

The Inspectorate told FD that the newspapers weren’t fined because they were writing about Ozempic, but because they were reporting on it as if it were a weight-loss drug. Ozempic is registered in the Netherlands as a diabetes medicine and is only legally available by prescription.