eventeen persons concerned, namely State and municipal employees and private businessmen, to the Presidential representative in the region. The source of the quotation was identified and the quotation itself was printed in bold and placed within quotation marks. The second publication reprinted the entire text of the letter together with the statement that the courts' management department of the Primorskiy Region had not been the one targeted in the initial publication. That additional statement was not found to contain any defamatory information per se and the finding of the applicants' liability in the proceedings in connection with the second publication was likewise founded on the text of the open letter.
44. The Court reiterates its constant approach that a distinction needs to be made according to whether the statements emanate from a journalist or are quotations from others, since punishment of a journalist for assisting in the dissemination of statements made by another person would seriously hamper the contribution of the press to discussion of matters of public interest and should not be envisaged unless there are particularly strong reasons for doing so (see Dyundin, cited above, §§ 29 and 34; Pedersen and Baadsgaard v. Denmark [GC], No. 49017/99, § 77, ECHR 2004-XI; Thorgeir Thorgeirson v. Iceland, 25 June 1992, § 65, Series A No. 239; and Jersild, cited above, § 35). In finding the applicants liable, the Russian courts treated as irrelevant the fact that they were not the source of the impugned allegation and that under Russian law, being the founders of the newspaper, they had no control over its editorial policy (see paragraph 23 above). Although the contested allegation was clearly identified as one proffered by other persons, the courts failed to advance any justification for imposing a punishment on the applicants for reproducing statements made by others, a failure which was incompatible with the Convention requirements.
45. Furthermore, such imposition of liability appears also to be at variance with the requirements of the Russian Mass-Media Act, which provides that a person should be exempted from liability if the statement in question emanated from State officials, bodies, organisations, agencies, companies or public associations (section 57). That exemption clause is perfectly consonant with the Court's own approach to the effect that the press should normally be entitled, when contributing to public debate on matters of legitimate concern, to rely on the content of official reports without having to undertake independent research (see Colombani and Others, cited above, § 65). The list of protected sources of information in section 57 of the Mass-Media Act is broad and it does not appear plausible that bodies of local self-government and their officials should be excluded from the scope of the fair-reporting exception. Thus, the distinction between State bodies and municipal bodies, drawn by the domestic courts in order to overrule the applicants' reliance on that exception, was rather formalistic and artificial. In any event, the letter had been signed, among others, by the local police chief and an official of the tax inspectorate, both of whom obviously fall within the ranks of officials explicitly listed in section 57.
46. Similarly, the Russian courts did not show in a convincing manner that the applicants could not avail themselves of the fair-reporting exception because the document at issue had been distributed at a press-conference organised by an "autonomous non-commercial organisation" rather than by a public association. Firstly, under Russian law, a "public association" is a generic term covering all types of non-governmental associations, including "autonomous non-commercial organisations". Secondly, as the applicants correctly pointed out, it was of little relevance on whose premises the press-conference had been organised, the important
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