cials and municipal employees. At the time the Mass-Media Act was enacted in 1991, Russian constitutional and administrative law classified municipal employees as State officials. Even though the 1993 Constitution drew a distinction between State bodies and bodies of local self-government, there was no evidence that the status of municipal employees had undergone any changes or that the Mass-Media Act needed to be amended in the light of the new legal status of municipal employees. In any event, the open letter had been signed not just by municipal employees, but also by public officials of the tax inspectorate, Federal Security Service and the police. Furthermore, municipal bodies and commercial companies were covered by the notion of "organisation" in paragraph 3 of section 57. The applicants pointed out that no one could reasonably expect that a statute's provision should list for the purposes of regulating public discourse all types and varieties of existing legal entities, organisations, bodies, agencies, etc.
28. The first applicant argued in addition that imposing pecuniary sanctions on the newspaper's founders in their personal capacity for damage caused by publications of which they had not been personally cognisant, should be considered as an unjustified restriction on freedom of the press. It was not appropriate to hold the founder liable for defamation when he had not made any personal attacks on the plaintiffs as a journalist and had taken no part in the editing or publishing process. Nor had he been obliged by law to read all the articles in the newspaper, to review their content or to verify personally the accuracy of the facts.
29. The applicants also claimed that the interference did not pursue any legitimate aim. The main objective of the defamation claim was to prevent the newspaper from criticising State bodies and officials in the future. Had it been otherwise, the litigation should have targeted the panel participants who had signed the open letter and presented it to the public rather than the newspaper that merely reprinted it. The interference could not be said to have pursued the aim of "maintaining the authority of the judiciary" because the courts' management department was in charge of the maintenance of court buildings and the proper organisational functioning of the judicial system; it did not adjudicate any cases. The argument as to the legitimate aim of "protecting the reputation and rights of others" was misconceived because the word "others" should, in the applicants' view, apply only to individuals or legal entities and could not extend to State bodies such as the courts' management department.
30. The applicants further contended that the interference at issue was not "necessary in a democratic society". The libel proceedings against them had had the aim of discouraging open discussion on important matters of public concern in the Primorskiy Region. The disputed statement had been part of an open letter which had not been an attack against the courts' management department or its officials but rather an appeal for a thorough and comprehensive investigation into the activities of companies that cut down timber. Referring to the Court's case-law, the applicants insisted that the press should be able to rely on the content of official reports without having to undertake independent research (see Colombani and Others v. France, No. 51279/99, § 65, ECHR 2002-V). In the context of the letter as a whole, the expression "irregularities have clearly been on the rise" should be regarded as a value judgment, not as an asserted fact. The domestic courts had failed to weigh the rights and interests of the courts' management department and of its head Mr Shulga in relation to the public interest in receiving information of public concern. Moreover, the protection afforded by Article 10 would be undermined if public officials responsibl
> 1 2 3 ... 17 18 19 ... 23 24 25
Zaki.ru законы и право
поиск по сайту
каталог документов
добавить сайт Zaki.ru в избранное
Правовые акты международные
Правовые акты Российской Федерации
