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Latvian Journalist Found Guilty Based on Possible "Conclusions" by Readers
Liana Sayadyan
hetq
00:05, June 18, 2011
Gintaras Visockas, publisher of the Latvian newspaper www.slaptai.lt,
has to spend 40 days in jail. He can't pay the 33,000 lats (10,000
Euro) in compensation for a slander suit he lost in the courts.
Visockas was found guilty of anything specific he wrote but rather, in
the court's view, due to the possible conclusions reached by the
average reader. I was fortunate to have met the beleaguered journalist
in a media conference recently sponsored by the OSCE in Vilnius.
Visockas, who has been covering military and political issues for the
past 25 years, wrote a piece about retired General Ceslovas Jezerskas,
a candidate for the Latvian presidency in 2009.
In his article, Visockas wrote that the general has been a keen
athlete in the Soviet era and that the Latvian State Security
Committee kept close tabs on all sport groups. He also wrote that the
general's wife and daughter had committed suicide.
A Vilnius court, in its decision, wrote that an average reader of the
article might get the impression that General Jezerskas was somehow
tied into the Latvian secret service. It ordered the journalist to pay
23,000 lats to the general for moral damages and 10,000 lats for the
plaintiff's incurred court fees.
The compensation portion is to be garnished from the journalist's
wages over a period of 1.5 years. But since Visockas cannot pay the
court fees, he was sentenced to 40 days in jail.
The journalist wasn't able to file an appeal since the general
petitioned the court as a private citizen and not a public figure.
According to Latvian law, in such cases a defendant's right to argue a
court verdict is restricted.
Visockas considers the court verdict ludicrous. "How can the court
predict what an average reader will conclude? If they are not asked,
then the court's verdict is mere supposition and I find it very
insulting."
At the Vilnius conference the journalist's lawyer said that the
unprecedented verdict was an attempt by judges and the society at
large to strike back at reporters for the widespread freedoms that
exist in the Latvian press.
"But it was an innocent man who was hit by this verdict. The big fish
have yet to be held accountable," said the lawyer.
She added that when the courts adjudicate cases involving slander or
defamation, not only must the interests of both sides (public v
private) be weighed, but that some semblance of balance must be
maintained between compensation awards and a newspaper's ability to
pay, and that this formula must be inscribed in the law.
As an example of such a violation of this principle, the lawyer cited
a recent case where a Latvian paper was found guilty of character
assassination when it published the personal details (names,
residences) of a number of AIDS patients. The paper was obligated to
pay each patient 3,000 Euros, the most it could fine the paper
according to the law. At a time, the paper only had paid-in-capital of
9 million Euros.
After this verdict Latvia attorneys filed a petition with the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It found the Latvia government
guilty of restricting people's rights by setting a maximum
compensation level and ordered Latvia to remove the threshold. Now,
courts must decide on an individual case basis.
Visockas is also pinning his hopes on the European Court since the
paper he runs is in a poor financial situation and can barely pay
employee wages.
This example from Latvia also reverberates with what is taking place
in Armenia today, given the judiciary's assault on the media here.
Our courts do not take into consideration a media outlet's financial
resources when issuing compensation awards for slander, defamation and
related charges. They do not follow the principle of proportionality
between the perceived extent of personal damage of the plaintiff and
the defendant's ability to pay. They also gloss over the public's
right to be informed.
We Armenian journalists at the conference weren't all that surprised
by the criminal punishment meted out to this reporter in Latvia, a
member of the European Union. (In many European countries, slander and
defamation are still on the books as criminal offenses.)
Rather, we were more astonished by the court's argument in finding
Gintaras Visockas guilty in the first place; i.e. the probable
assumptions of readers.
I thought to myself that it would be good if Armenian judges never got
wind of this "substantiation" for use in their own verdicts.
But in the recent slander case pitting the Kocharyan family against
the newspaper Hrapark, I saw that those involved in our legal system
are cleverer by a mile. There, the plaintiff's legal team got to work
taking choice adjectives out of context and building a case on such
misrepresentation.
Here too in Armenia, we can only out our hopes in the European Court
and wait for it to issue a decision brought by an Armenian media
outlet.
But how will judges in Armenia comprehend it since, if they wanted to,
they could take into account existing European Court legal precedents.
Liana Sayadyan
hetq
00:05, June 18, 2011
Gintaras Visockas, publisher of the Latvian newspaper www.slaptai.lt,
has to spend 40 days in jail. He can't pay the 33,000 lats (10,000
Euro) in compensation for a slander suit he lost in the courts.
Visockas was found guilty of anything specific he wrote but rather, in
the court's view, due to the possible conclusions reached by the
average reader. I was fortunate to have met the beleaguered journalist
in a media conference recently sponsored by the OSCE in Vilnius.
Visockas, who has been covering military and political issues for the
past 25 years, wrote a piece about retired General Ceslovas Jezerskas,
a candidate for the Latvian presidency in 2009.
In his article, Visockas wrote that the general has been a keen
athlete in the Soviet era and that the Latvian State Security
Committee kept close tabs on all sport groups. He also wrote that the
general's wife and daughter had committed suicide.
A Vilnius court, in its decision, wrote that an average reader of the
article might get the impression that General Jezerskas was somehow
tied into the Latvian secret service. It ordered the journalist to pay
23,000 lats to the general for moral damages and 10,000 lats for the
plaintiff's incurred court fees.
The compensation portion is to be garnished from the journalist's
wages over a period of 1.5 years. But since Visockas cannot pay the
court fees, he was sentenced to 40 days in jail.
The journalist wasn't able to file an appeal since the general
petitioned the court as a private citizen and not a public figure.
According to Latvian law, in such cases a defendant's right to argue a
court verdict is restricted.
Visockas considers the court verdict ludicrous. "How can the court
predict what an average reader will conclude? If they are not asked,
then the court's verdict is mere supposition and I find it very
insulting."
At the Vilnius conference the journalist's lawyer said that the
unprecedented verdict was an attempt by judges and the society at
large to strike back at reporters for the widespread freedoms that
exist in the Latvian press.
"But it was an innocent man who was hit by this verdict. The big fish
have yet to be held accountable," said the lawyer.
She added that when the courts adjudicate cases involving slander or
defamation, not only must the interests of both sides (public v
private) be weighed, but that some semblance of balance must be
maintained between compensation awards and a newspaper's ability to
pay, and that this formula must be inscribed in the law.
As an example of such a violation of this principle, the lawyer cited
a recent case where a Latvian paper was found guilty of character
assassination when it published the personal details (names,
residences) of a number of AIDS patients. The paper was obligated to
pay each patient 3,000 Euros, the most it could fine the paper
according to the law. At a time, the paper only had paid-in-capital of
9 million Euros.
After this verdict Latvia attorneys filed a petition with the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. It found the Latvia government
guilty of restricting people's rights by setting a maximum
compensation level and ordered Latvia to remove the threshold. Now,
courts must decide on an individual case basis.
Visockas is also pinning his hopes on the European Court since the
paper he runs is in a poor financial situation and can barely pay
employee wages.
This example from Latvia also reverberates with what is taking place
in Armenia today, given the judiciary's assault on the media here.
Our courts do not take into consideration a media outlet's financial
resources when issuing compensation awards for slander, defamation and
related charges. They do not follow the principle of proportionality
between the perceived extent of personal damage of the plaintiff and
the defendant's ability to pay. They also gloss over the public's
right to be informed.
We Armenian journalists at the conference weren't all that surprised
by the criminal punishment meted out to this reporter in Latvia, a
member of the European Union. (In many European countries, slander and
defamation are still on the books as criminal offenses.)
Rather, we were more astonished by the court's argument in finding
Gintaras Visockas guilty in the first place; i.e. the probable
assumptions of readers.
I thought to myself that it would be good if Armenian judges never got
wind of this "substantiation" for use in their own verdicts.
But in the recent slander case pitting the Kocharyan family against
the newspaper Hrapark, I saw that those involved in our legal system
are cleverer by a mile. There, the plaintiff's legal team got to work
taking choice adjectives out of context and building a case on such
misrepresentation.
Here too in Armenia, we can only out our hopes in the European Court
and wait for it to issue a decision brought by an Armenian media
outlet.
But how will judges in Armenia comprehend it since, if they wanted to,
they could take into account existing European Court legal precedents.