Information Note on the Court’s case-law 52

April 2003

Harlanova v. Latvia (dec.) - 57313/00

Decision 3.4.2003 [Section I]

Article 10

Article 10-1

Freedom of expression

Award of damages against a journalist for defamation of a religious official: inadmissible

The applicant, a journalist on a major Latvian daily newspaper, was convicted for publishing two articles containing allegations against the President of the Central Council of the Old Orthodox Church, I.M. In those articles, the applicant stated that I.M. had received a large gift in money from the Catholic Curia in Riga to build a temple, but that instead of immediately using the money for building purpos es he had deposited it with a business whose activities included the export of organs and tissues of human origin. I.M. claimed that the allegations were untrue. The court of first instance dismissed his application for damages: the impugned articles conta ined no reference to external sources of information and therefore represented the applicant's personal opinion, but all the facts alleged were to be found in a report of the Council of the Old Orthodox Church and also in a letter from M.P., a member of th e internal audit committee of that Church. The Riga Regional Court examined the documents in the file and held that the imputations in question were not proved and that the abovementioned evidence could not support the truth of the allegations, since the f irst item was declared null and void by the Council and the second item was not legally useable. The court ordered the journalist to pay the sum of approximately EUR 800 by way of compensation for the harm to I.M.'s reputation and ordered that an official denial be published. The Senate of the Supreme Court dismissed the applicant's appeal.

Inadmissible under Article 10: The award of damages against the applicant and the order to publish a denial of the allegations in issue constitute an interference with t he exercise of her right to freedom of expression. The interference was “in accordance with the law” and pursued a legitimate aim, namely the protection of the reputation and the rights of others. As regards the need for the interference in a democratic so ciety, the articles published contained a specific allegation of fact against a specific person; the applicant could therefore expect to be required to prove the truth of the imputation. The regional court expressly found, on the evidence in the file avail able to it, that I.M. had never done what the applicant accused him of having done in the articles. In principle, it is not for the Court to substitute its own assessment of the facts of the case for that of the national courts; it will therefore take it a s established that the allegations in issue were false. It is therefore necessary to ascertain whether there were any particular grounds to relieve the applicant of the obligation placed on her, in her professional capacity, to verify factual allegations w hich defamed I.M. Of particular relevance in that regard are the nature and the degree of the defamation in question, and also the extent to which the applicant could at the material time consider, reasonably and in good faith, that the letter from M.P. an d the minutes of the Council were credible sources of information and that they made it unnecessary for her to carry out any research or investigations into the matter. On the first point, the national authorities are better placed than the international j udge to determine the place and the importance of religion and the Church in the State. The accusation in this case was a serious one. On the second point, the allegations in question were made within the wider context of the conflict splitting the Old Ort hodox community in Latvia, in the knowledge that the two parties to the conflict regularly published accusations and charges against each other. In those circumstances, any journalist intending to report those charges was under a particular duty of vigilan ce. Consequently, where a particularly serious charge was made by one of the parties, the applicant could not automatically give credence to it; she was under a duty to ascertain that the allegations were true, by herself obtaining further information and, if appropriate, hearing the other side's version of the facts. It is also necessary to examine the form in which the allegations in issue were presented to the reader. The applicant's articles, which were written in a polemical tone, made no reference to the source of the information and did not appear until a year after the information had appeared. Furthermore, all the imputations made against I.M. were expressed in a strictly positive manner and left the reader in no doubt as to their veracity, without any indication that the applicant intended to distance herself from them. Any uninformed reader reading either of the articles could infer that I.M.'s financial machinations were a firmly established fact and were in principle not open to controversy, and that the information came directly from the applicant and not from another source. The applicant therefore failed to fulfil the professional and ethical obligation which she bore as a journalist to provide society with accurate and credible information. Th e gravity of the penalty applied in the present case cannot be held to be disproportionate to the legitimate aim pursued: manifestly ill founded.

Inadmissible under Article 14.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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