A regional court in western Ukraine squashed a Hr 150,000 lawsuit against a popular local daily newspaper on April 24, bringing to a close a case that had journalists nationwide rallying to the publication’s defense.
The lawsuit – the latest of many recent legal disputes involving Ukrainian media – began on March 31, when a district court in Lviv unexpectedly resurrected a two-year-old lawsuit against the local paper Ekspres. The court ordered the newspaper to pay Hr 150,000 ($28,000) in damages to a little known local composer.
The composer said he had been libeled by a tiny, 12-line item in Ekspres, which alleged that one of his songs was plagiarized.
But less than a month later, and after an outpouring of support for Ekspres from media around the country, Lviv oblast court overruled the lower court’s decision on April 24 after hearing an appeal from Ekspres, which claimed the paper had not been even informed of the original hearing.
Ekspres officials said the hearing of the lawsuit, which had been filed in 1997 but had not previously come to court, was ordered by the regional governor in an attempt to punish Ekspres for critical articles it had published about him.
The paper is one of the most popular in western Ukraine, with weekly circulation of 290,000 copies.
‘We understand that this case was a primitive challenge, revenge for our [independent] stance during the [presidential] election campaign [last fall], and for our harsh and fair criticism of the regional authorities,’ Ekspres said in a statement.
Governor Stepan Senchuk, chairman of the Lviv Oblast State Administration, could not be reached for comment.
The case against Ekspres prompted the newspaper’s staff to launch demonstrations in Lviv. The actions soon snowballed into nationwide demonstrations of support from other media outlets.
Ten Ekspres journalists went on hunger strike on April 19, while the newspaper’s other employees built a barricade in the center of Lviv, held marches in the city, and sent appeals to the authorities in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, 182 papers from across Ukraine sent Ekspres letters of support, more than a dozen nationwide and regional TV companies aired reports supporting the paper’s action, while journalists in several big regional centers across the country picketed local government headquarters to show their solidarity with Ekspres.
‘We received unprecedented support from other media outlets, which shows how big the problem is,’ said Ekspres’ editor, Ihor Pochynok.
The April 24 court ruling led the Ekspres journalists to suspend their five-day-long hunger strike. TV footage later the same day showed the jubilant hunger strikers drinking tomato juice to celebrate their victory. However, one of the hunger strikers, seriously weakened by lack of food, had to be rushed by doctors to hospital several hours before the oblast court started examining Ekspres’ appeal.
‘This is our small victory,’ Pochynok said. ‘We managed to draw the attention of society to the problem of courts and tax inspections being [the state’s] tool against the press.’
The Ekspres case is the latest ugly blotch on Ukraine’s spotty press freedom record, which international media monitors have criticized as one of the world’s poorest.
Some of the worst recent cases of political pressure on the press came during the presidential election campaign last fall, when at least five TV channels switched from mild opposition to full support for incumbent Leonid Kuchma during the campaign.
In addition, several regional newspaper were forced to close last year after being inspected by various government agencies.
In 1998, two nationwide newspapers were forced to shut down – in one case temporarily – after losing multi-million dollar lawsuits to state officials.
‘Such cases tend to occur regularly,’ said Hennady Poshtar, director of Irex ProMedia, a Western-financed non-government media organization in Kyiv.
Pochynok, Ekspres’ editor, said his paper would continue to press for amendments to the law on media that would prevent individuals suing newspapers for huge sums in ‘moral damages.’
He said Ekspress has sent idraft amendments to parliament, proposing a limit on the sum that can be demanded as compensation for damages, and defining criteria for determining the seriousness of moral damage caused.
‘Unless the law is amended, the kind of situation we’ve experienced can happen to anyone at any time,’ Pochynok told the Post by telephone from Lviv.
He said Ekspres would resume the hunger strike on June 6 if parliament did not approve the amendments by that date.
Media analysts said the nationwide media protest Ekspres has launched may also help strengthen the feeling of unity among journalists and allow the media to better fend off legal attacks.
‘I hope that this precedent will help create a new powerful organization, a journalistic lobby,’ Poshtar said.
