European Court of Human Rights: : Salumäki v. Finland

• Autores: Dirk Voorhoof
• Localización: IRIS: Legal Observations of the European Audiovisual Observatory, ISSN-e 1023-8565, Nº. 6, 2014, págs. 2-3
• Idioma: francés
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• Resumen

  • Can a title of a newspaper article that could be interpreted as damaging the reputation of a public person justify a criminal conviction of the journalist who wrote the article, while the article itself is written in good faith and does not contain any factual errors or defamatory allegations? That is the question the European Court needed to answer in a recent case against Finland. The applicant in this case is Tiina Johanna Salumäki, a journalist working for the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat. Ms Salumäki published an article concerning the investigation into a homicide (of P.O.). The front page of the newspaper carried a headline asking whether the victim of the homicide had connections with K.U., a well-known Finnish businessman. A photograph of K.U. appeared on the same page. Next to the article was a separate column mentioning K.U.�s previous conviction for economic crimes. The Helsinki District Court convicted the journalist, Salumäki, and the newspaper�s editor-in-chief at the time, H.S., of defaming K.U. as the title of their article insinuated that K.U. had been involved in the killing, even though it was made clear in the text of the article itself that the homicide suspect had no connections with K.U. Along with H.S., Salumäki was ordered to pay damages and costs to K.U. This judgment was subsequently upheld on appeal and the Supreme Court finally refused leave to appeal. Salumäki complained that her conviction had amounted to a violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. She argued that the information presented in the article was correct and that the title of the article only connected K.U. to the victim and did not insinuate that K.U. had connections with the perpetrator, or that he was involved in the homicide.