Journalist Fined for Insulting Traffic Policeman

The law­suit on defense of hon­or and busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion was based on two arti­cles pub­lished on Kraj.by, titled “Pol­ish cit­i­zen: Hav­ing tak­en a psy­chotrop­ic drug, jumped behind the wheel fol­low­ing a traf­fic warden’s demand” (Pho­to) (link) and “Actions of traf­fic war­den lack crime con­stituents – Pol­ish cit­i­zen receives a reply from Molodech­no dis­trict depart­ment of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee” (link).

The plain­tiff, the traf­fic war­den Ivan Fio­da­rau deemed that the arti­cles pro­vid­ed false infor­ma­tion that insult­ed him. He demand­ed pub­lic excus­es from the website’s edi­tors and refu­ta­tion of the ear­li­er infor­ma­tion, and a moral dam­age com­pen­sa­tion of 4000 BYN.

The defen­dant sum­moned the Pol­ish cit­i­zen Valiantsin Shafalovich as a wit­ness.

Prob­a­bly, the court had expect­ed for­eign guests on that day because the court sec­re­tary insis­tent­ly asked the BAJ lawyer for accred­i­ta­tion of the Belaru­sian For­eign Affairs Min­istry.

The chief edi­tor if the web­site Kraj.by Svi­at­lana Tsishko con­sid­ers that the prob­lems with the pub­li­ca­tion could have been avoid­ed, if the head of Mal­adzech­na traf­fic police had time­ly and ful­ly pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion on the course of the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, ini­ti­at­ed against I. Fio­da­rau upon a com­plaint of the Pol­ish cit­i­zen V. Shafalovich. The head of the traf­fick police and I. Fio­da­rau per­son­al­ly refused from giv­ing an inter­view, so the arti­cle main­ly pro­vid­ed the stand­ing of the “aggriev­ed” V. Shafalovich, where­as the offi­cial stand­ing of the traf­fic police was almost miss­ing from the arti­cle. Thus, the case has revealed the issue of access to infor­ma­tion for jour­nal­ists of on-state mass media.

The court upheld the plaintiff’s claim, impos­ing on jour­nal­ists the moral dam­age com­pen­sa­tion of 300 BYN. The jour­nal­ist S. Zianko and the chief edi­tor Svi­at­lana Tsishko are going to lodge an appeal with the Min­sk Region­al Court. The chief edi­tor is con­sid­er­ing to file a com­plaint to the prosecutor’s office ask­ing to hold a legal assess­ment of the refusal of offi­cial com­ment to the portal’s request on the inci­dent men­tioned in the arti­cles.