17 Jan 2012 | Russia
Popular Russian blogger Oleg Kozyrev has been threatened with a defamation lawsuit by Moscow Region Election Committee for filing a complaint on alleged election law violations.
“Clearly this is an example of pressure against bloggers who succeeded on election law violations reporting,” Kozyrev told Index. “This may be regarded as a part of the Central Election Committee policy which is likely to take vengeance on bloggers by initiating show trials”, he concluded.
Two months ago Kozyrev filed a complaint to the Central Election Committee in the time leading up to Russia’s parliamentary elections on 4 December. He complained that the posters used by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party were far too similar to those used by the committee to remind citizens to vote.
The blogger said that it was likely that the posters could confuse voters by leading them to believe that the state supported one party — United Russia. According to Kozyrev, this could compromise the impartiality of the election commission, and place political parties on different footing, which is against the law. Kozyrev used Russian election statutes to support his allegations, and asked that the Central Election Committee take down the confusing posters, and investigate whether or not United Russia also violated the law with their campaign materials.
Moscow mayor and secretary of the local chapter of United Russia, Sergey Sobyanin, slammed Kozyrev’s complaint, claiming that the resemblance between the posters did not violate the law. Sobyanin told Itogi magazine two weeks before the election that there was no use in “stretching the truth” and that when talking about United Russia in Moscow, they “imply that the party and city superiors are in fact, the same unit.”
After the elections, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) filed a report reiterating the concerns of activists, stating that the parliamentary elections were “marked by the convergence of the State and the governing party.”
In late December Oleg Kozyrev received two replies to his concerns—one from Moscow Election Committee, the other from Moscow Region Committee. Both committees refuted his claims, and said that the United Russia posters did not violate the law. Moscow Region Committee head Irek Vildanov added that Kozyrev’s complaints had “no proper proof, do not meet reality and are slanderous, undermining the Committee’s reputation.” The blogger’s complaint was then forwarded to the local prosecution office, and the Ministry of Interior department as well as Investigative committee are both seeking an investigation of Kozyrev for slander.
Kozyrev remains optimistic, as he thinks that Vildanov’s attempt to prosecute him will not be pursued, as prosecution of citizens for their complaints is against the law in Russia. The State Duma also amended the Criminal Code to decriminalise defamation. Still, he is concerned, as bloggers who actively monitored the recent parliamentary elections have been threatened with prosecution. As Russian general prosecutor Yuri Chaika said in January, the administrative punishment for slander “is still quite sensible financially”. On his blog, Kozyrev wrote that such threats are merely “the authorities’ attempt not only to punish bloggers for their successful coverage of election fraud, but also to smooth out the information field on the eve of presidential elections.”
9 Jan 2012 | Americas, Index Index, minipost
The author of a discredited report linking autism to the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine has filed a defamation suit against the British Medical Journal. Andrew Wakefield launched his libel case against three defendants in the United States last week. The gastroenterologist is suing investigative journalist Brian Deer for a BMJ article which analysed his data and accused him of fraud; BMJ editor Fiona Godlee who supported the accusation in an editorial, and the BMJ as a whole. Wakefield claims that the journal acted with malice and suggests a conflict of interest because the BMJ receives money from vaccine makers GlaxoSmithKline and Merck.
4 Jan 2012 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood today announced plans to sue an independent newspaper for allegedly insulting the leader and its female members. Newspaper Al-Fagr published an article on 29 December by Mohamed al-Baz in which he reviewed a book written by Entissar Abdel Moniem, a female ex-member of the Brotherhood who slammed the organisation for their position on women. Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mahmoud Ghazlan said that al-Baz slandered the group’s leader and its female members, and they would not tolerate defaming “honourable people under the veneer of free opinion.” The paper has also come under fire recently for printing articles against the ruling military leadership.
21 Dec 2011 | Leveson Inquiry
A journalist at the Daily Express who covered the disappearance of Madeleine McCann told the Leveson Inquiry that featuring the story on the front page became the editor’s “obsession”.
Nick Fagge said the tabloid’s then editor — Peter Hill — had decided the case of the toddler, who went missing in Portugal in May 2007, would “sell papers” and featured the story on the front page of the paper regardless of an article’s strength.
“The editor at the time decided it was the only story he was interested in,” Fagge said, adding that he himself was concerned over the direction the coverage was going in.
Kate and Gerry McCann accepted £550,000 in damages and an apology from Express Newspapers in March 2008 for what the publisher admitted were “entirely untrue” and “defamatory” articles. The damages were donated to the fund set up to find the toddler.
Another reporter on the case, David Pilditch, told the Inquiry that “getting to the truth” of the matter was “impossible” because of the laws in Portugal restricting police talking to the press about the case.
“There was no strategy, just confusion all round, when there should have been focus”.
Pilditch and Fagge’s colleague, Padraic Flanagan, told the Inquiry that they were sent to Portugal to “produce stories” and that it would take “quite a brave reporter to call the desk and say ‘I’m not really sure about this, I’m not going to send anything back today’.”
“The questions I asked myself,” he said, “were ‘what can I find today’, ‘what can I offer the newsdesk, how can I keep up with rivals?'”, Flanagan said.
Fagge said, ” I’d be thinking of verifying the story as best I could. I wouldn’t be thinking of a potential libel case.”
With the restrictions in place, Pilditch said his sources included Portuguese newspapers, the McCanns’ spokesman, local crime reporters who had been in contact with the police, and a police translator. He told the Inquiry he was able to develop dialogue with police through these third party sources.
“All I could do was present the information [to the newsdesk] and explain the sources where the information came from,” he said, adding that there was “no way round” the situation.
Counsel to the Inquiry Robert Jay QC ran Pilditch through a series of articles about the McCanns that had his byline. One reported “findings” of Madeleine’s DNA in the family’s hire car, which Jay said was “at best inconclusive”.
He pointed out that the toddler’s DNA was not uncovered in the car, to which Pilditch said, “we know that now, but we didn’t know that then”.
He added, “a problem with a lot of this stuff was the way information was leaking out”, noting it was as though the police were “thinking out loud”.
In an article that opened with “Kate and Gerry McCann are still regarded as the prime suspects in the disappearance of their daughter”, Pilditch claimed it he “didn’t really write the story”, but the piece was bylined with Pilditch and Fagge’s names.
Later, Jay put it to Pilditch that he was “getting all sorts of tittle-tattle form different people when you knew the police couldn’t officially talk”.
He also asked Pilditch if “people like you” thought about the impact of their stories, which “imply that the child has not been abducted but something far more sinister has happened”.
Pilditch denied it was tittle-tattle, telling Jay that the information came from senior detectives on the case.
Lord Justice Leveson said: “it’s all fluff.”
The Inquiry will continue on 9 January.
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