Journalists should not have to pay for the emotional pain of the truth

10.09.2024. / 16:05

BANJALUKA – If you write truthfully and present verified information, you cannot be convicted of defamation, and those who suffer emotional pain based on such texts do not need to pay any compensation.

This is the conclusion that emerges from the judgment of the Basic Court in Banja Luka, which rejected as unfounded the lawsuit of Vladimir Kajkut, the former director of the Banja Luka Home for Children without Parental Care “Rada Vranješević” against the portal CAPITAL for the text “After the scandal in the House, he got the director’s chair in RHMZ”.

Kajkut sued for 5,000 marks for insulting his reputation and honor, considering that writing about his peasantry from one republican institution to another was an abuse of the freedom of expression, demanding that the text be deleted.

However, the court stated in its verdict that there is no basis for such a thing, because the text contains facts that are true and previously verified.

„During the proceedings, the prosecutor did not prove with the presented evidence that the defendant made a defamatory statement and thereby injured his reputation, because it is a matter of presenting facts that are true. The defendant’s text does not contain defamatory expressions, since it is about facts that were previously checked and published publicly, and there was no need for the plaintiff to be informed in advance and asked for permission to publish before their publication“, the verdict states.

In the lawsuit, Kajkut claimed that the text insinuates that he is responsible for the scandalous cases of child abuse in the home he managed, which the court also judged to be unfounded because, as you can easily see, the issue of responsibility was not even mentioned anywhere.

„The prosecutor does not dispute these events because they are well-known events about which the public is regularly informed, and the prosecutor himself stated in his testimony that he resigned from the position of director of the home after the disputed events because he felt it was a moral duty.“, the judgment reads.

Kajkuta was also bothered by what he did CAPITAL indicated that he got a chair in one of the most active institutions in the RS when it comes to employment along party and family lines.

The court stated that this does not apply to him and that the lawsuit is not justified on that basis either.

„Nowhere in the text is it claimed that he was employed on one of those grounds because the specific statements refer to the institution. In addition, that allegation points with a link to another text where they investigated the appointment of several officials in the RHMZ and confirmed their writings through the Main Service for Public Sector Audit of the RS, which found that the institution employed 18 employees on a fixed-term basis without a competition for a period longer than six months from which it follows that even these allegations do not have the character of defamatory expression“, is a passage from the judgment in which it is noted that CAPITAL duly conveyed his denials.

The court draws attention to the fact that Kajkut’s mental pain was caused by negative comments on portals and from his surroundings, but yes CAPITAL he has no responsibility there.

„It is about a reaction to the writing from the text which was found to be true, i.e. that the plaintiff resigned after the events in the home and relatively quickly got a new job, for which there can be no responsibility of the defendant“, is the conclusion of the court.

We remind you that Kajkut’s director, Darko Borojević, recently lost his case with a similar lawsuit, who also believed that journalists should pay fines for telling the truth.

Namely, our writing regarding his appointment, the illegal employment of 18 workers at the Institute, as well as the advancement of his wife also employed at this institution, which we supported with a handful of evidence, he tried to present as slander.

However, the court found that all the allegations in the text published on August 2, 2022 under the title “Nepotism and scandals of recommendations for the new mandate of the director of the RHMZ” are completely true.

CAPITAL: Dejan Tovilović