By: Prof. Dr. Lejla Turčilo
Sarajevo, 16.08.2019. – One of the fundamental rights that serves as the basis for every democratic society, is the public right to be informed, that is, public right to have forehand and checked information about people, events and venues from their surrounding environment and their local community. According to these information, general public does make judgements, they launch discussions and make decisions about themselves and those that concern community they live in; that is, they create public opinion that public and local decision bringers must respect during the period when they represent the people and while performing their public duties and tasks.
Public figures and level of tolerance
Law on Protection against Defamation is actually rarely considered in lights of the protection of rights of common public to be informed. In common public discourse, we have had two profiled points of view that identify protection against defamation as mechanism which should serve interests
of specific interested parties (sides) during the process of media reporting.
Holders of public functions and public figures reckon that Law on Protection against Defamation had been created for the purpose of their protection from criminal judgement of media, including journalists, and also aimed to protect them from questioning their work in transparent and public manner. They seem to forget that it is actually the public position that bounds and obliges them to wider range and scope of tolerance in regard with critical views and words, including public expression of opinions aimed against them. In other words, they tend to forget that by accepting the role of public figure, with all privileges they have, they in fact accept to be monitored more than other people whose jobs are not as popular as theirs. This of course does not necessarily provide amnesty for another side (party) in this process, including media and journalists, from their duty to make their reports about public figures to be based on checked and verifiable arguments and founded on facts. As far as journalists’ “pole” is concerned, these discussions that cover the issues of the protection against defamation, recently produce a disputable view and stance claiming that it is actually the number of lawsuits that represents and displays some kind of objectivity of media houses, because they are so called brave people that do not hesitate to post, publish, announce, exposé and release information about public figures that consequently press charges against the same journalists, while others are skeptical, as far releasing of such information is concerned, because they cannot be considered as independent journalists.
It is a fact that charges pressed for defamatory statements in Bosnia and Herzegovina are mostly launched by public figures, mostly including politicians and holders of public functions (most of the time), because they simply do not consider and hold themselves responsible to general public, so every critical – biased writing is considered and treated as offence and insult targeted against them, but more often, due to the fact that through reprised charges and lawsuits, they try to endanger certain media houses even when media representatives and journalists of these houses do report in most professional manner and when their reporting is based on facts. However, unfortunately we have been far off from claims that all lawsuits for defamation are precarious and unfounded including all media houses, media representatives and journalist responsible in their reporting. In this context, it is indeed incorrect to assert and affirm that the fact that someone has pressed charges against you may represent a sign of professionalism, even in societies such as our own; a society with exceptionally low level of consciousness demonstrated by public figures that, according to description by Ozren Kebo “the insult and offence has become a stylish figure”, have become rather frequent occurrence, so we could not allege that there have not been defamations in our media houses to that extent, so that certain media would be surprised when they receive court summons. Just as there were professional and unprofessional media houses, there have also been founded and unfounded charges and lawsuits for defamatory statements.
Yet another important aspect is to be reawakened in this discussion about defamation in public space, and it relates to raising the awareness of culture of dialogue and quality, crucial for discussions in public space. In recently established media houses, accompanied by system – based social separations (such as ours), but also the least based negative information about some person, group, institution, organization, has almost exponentially developed its range, where almost every spark can turn into hate speech, posted in both social media source’s, and also appearing in global and common space. The responsibility for spoken words, particularly the responsibility for everything that appears in public must be treated as pure claim about somebody and something which can actually be proved by presenting
concrete information and this responsibility thus becomes even bigger. Of course, primary goals are not the development of dialogues, regarding the protection from defamatory statements, but they somehow serve as specific “side effects” and it is encouraging to try and understand the story this way as well.
Law as a reminder of professional standards
In shortest terms, as far as we (non – solicitors) or people with limited knowledge about legal issues) that is, people that understand protection from defamatory statements in wider context, rationale, behind scenes actually relates to respecting ethical norms and deontological stance of journalist’s professional. In other words, its purpose and goal is to protect the public right to get informed and to know, in terms of making guarantees that what they had encounter is in fact the truth (as the truth itself is actually truthful), but also to protect the public right to receive quality – based and well – checked information from different and various sources, instead of releasing false news, posting false news, launching disinformation and semi – truths.
Law on Protection against Defamation is actually not there to protect anybody in terms of her/his being legally untouchable and intact, if by its professional work she/he had been present in public and considered as responsible to the public. It is no longer repression mechanism aimed towards media
houses and journalists that work on investigative stories (it is actually because of this
reason that defamation has been decriminalized in most democratic societies); however, it must no longer convince media houses with false attitude that unfounded and argument and no evidence writing about anybody and anything may be in line with any kind of standards; on the contrary.
Law is actually here, so media community could remind public about professional standards and to remind common public about their own rights to get informed about events and venues in the community
they live in.
(BHN Bulletin E-journalist number 65, Sarajevo)