Court orders Malta government envoy to the World Tourism Organisation to pay Eur5,000 in libel damages
This was not for expressing an opinion about a public figure (you’d be surprised how many people can’t tell the difference), but for writing false information about a public figure on Facebook, which false information the court considered to be damaging.
The case was instituted by Richard Cachia Caruana, who had just resigned as Malta’s permanent representative in Brussels at the time Joe Grima wrote what he did.
This might possibly be the first, and definitely is one of the first, ‘Facebook libel judgements’. It should serve as a salutary lesson to all those Maltese people who think that Facebook is a sort of extension of their phone or living-room. It is not.
Under the law, writing or uploading something on your Facebook Timeline constitutes publication even if you keep your Timeline restricted to your Facebook friends, so it does not give you the security to lie about people in a harmful way, or repeat information which is false but damaging (false but not damaging does not constitute libel, slander or defamation, obviously), which is quite as it should be.
Some people who think nothing of defaming others on Facebook with lies and false information need to be reminded that the law does not care whether you are a journalist or not when you do this. Libel laws do not apply only to journalists – it just so happens that until the advent of the internet, it was only journalists and authors who could use the means of general publication to libel others. Now those means are available to anyone via the internet.
But there’s that other point: this is the sort of person the government chooses to appoint as envoy to the World Tourism Organisation, somebody who spreads falsehoods on Facebook. Let’s not forget that it’s not the first time, either, and that he was asked to leave his Super One show (in a stage-managed exercise for the electoral campaign) for what he said about an English priest who had the temerity to write a quiet piece about Dom Mintoff for The Catholic Herald.
8 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
It would be a salutary lesson and an inducement not to libel capriciously but only if these judgments are delivered within a reasonable time not when the defaming writing is allowed to continue to cause damage for many years on end.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140317/local/joe-grima-ordered-to-pay-5000-libel-damages-to-cachia-caruana.510995
Qatt mort f’xi fergha ta’ HSBC u qdewk kaxxiera bl-uniformi ta’ BOV ? Qatt mort f’xi fergha ta’ GO u ssib il-haddiema bil-polo shirts ta’ MELITA? Zgur li le. Pero haga ta’ l-iskantament tmur tirkeb fuq it-trasport pubbliku u ssib haddiema bl-uniformi ta’ ARRIVA.
U ma’ nahsibx li din hija haga temporanja u bla mahsuba imma hi l-istrategija tal-gvern li drajnih jitfa il-htija tan- nuqqasijiet tieghu fuq haddiehor. B’hekk il-pubbliku jassocja in-nuqqasijiet tal-ministru tat-trasport fuq l-ARRIVA u mhux fuq l-inkompetenza tieghu.
This photo reminds me of when I saw the elephants being hosed down at Chester Zoo.
The irony of complaining about “two weights, two measures” is apparently lost on the man.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-03-17/news/richard-cachia-caruana-wins-libel-case-against-joe-grima-4292247552/
[Daphne – I can’t understand what his argument is. This was a civil suit not a police prosecution. He clearly doesn’t understand the difference.]
Doesn’t understand the difference, pretends he doesn’t, or pretends there’s no difference. After all he knows that most people won’t be fagged to go check the details for themselves. In the art of playing the victim anything goes.
He should have been banished to the ‘Fat Farm’ also. Water, veggies and fruit, nothing else.
“Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant was ordered to pay €10,000 in damages to former Nationalist minister Ninu Zammit, after court decided that a 2007 speech he made was defamatory” (MaltaToday)