Estonian daily to appeal against court ruling in PM's favor

Photo: PMO montaaž

The daily Õhtuleht is going to appeal the Harju regional court's ruling in favor of Prime Minister Andrus Ansip in a higher-level court.

"We shall appeal the ruling in its entirety," the lawyer Ants Nomper representing Õhtuleht told BNS. In his words, the story carried by the paper represented the journalist's understanding of a complex utterance by the prime minister. "If the court finds that only one interpretation is possible we'll accept it, but we want to hear this also from the higher-level court," he said.

The first-instance Harju court found in its January 29 ruling that Ohtuleht had distorted a quote by Ansip in an article published on May 29 last year, creating the impression the prime minister said that phone calls of businesspeople and politicians are listened to.

"The fact that the plaintiff is the prime minister of Estonia who is undeniably a public figure and in whose activities and statements the public takes a heightened interest does not mean that the media may publish factually incorrect information about him or that he does not have the right to be portrayed truthfully before the public," the court stated, adding that if Õhtuleht did not clearly understand whan Ansip meant it had the opportunity to ask the prime minister to explain his statement before going to print.

The daily Postimees published on May 28 an article quoting Ansip as saying: "It is a pity that such a situation has developed in Estonia, but unfortunately it is so that business leaders, not to speak about party secretary generals, do not assume that their phone calls are not listened to. The assumption is rather that all phone calls are taped and essentially public."

Ohtuleht carried on the next day an article under the headline "Prime minister: the calls of politicians and businessmen are being eavesdropped on" to which Ansip took exception. Before suing the paper he demanded that the headline be retracted but the paper refused.