The director of the Emergency Medicine Institute Mihail Ciocanu issued IPN News Agency with a preliminary dispute resolution request in accordance with the Law on the Freedom of Expression whereby he asks “to rectify and deny the disseminated defamatory information, to give the right to reply and to offer apologies for publishing the given information”.
In particular, the administration of the Emergency Medicine Institute has objections to the IPN news article “Mother of man in a coma seeks assistance in transferring son to another hospital” that was published on www.ipn.md on September 21, 2017. The given news item was produced based on the statements made in a news conference given the same day by Fiodor Ghelici, chairman of the public control commission of the Civil Society Council working under the President of Moldova, under the theme: “Fireman hospitalized, mother offered to sell her son’s liver in ten days. There are suspicions that the Emergency Medicine Institute is a center for selling human organs”.
”On 21.09.2017, at 08:55am, the publication “Mother offered to sell son’s liver” appeared on the website IPN.MD. The Agency’s comment over the press conference, even if the participants in this didn’t formulate such conclusions, says: ”There are suspicions that the Emergency Medicine Institute is a center for selling human organs”. This assertion is defamatory and affects the professional reputation of the IMSP Emergency Medicine Institute. Moreover, the real facts and circumstances were distorted by the participants in the news conference and do not correspond to the objective reality,” says the document that was exactly quoted by IPN Agency.
By this Denial/Rectification, IPN expresses its readiness to rectify and deny the information that the applicant considers defamatory in the place and the meaning that refer strictly to the exactness of reproducing the verbal message formulated by the organizers of the news conference. In this regard, the news article published on October 21, 2017 is rectified as follows and the consumers of information are requested to use only this variant of the news item:
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“Mother of man in a coma seeks assistance in transferring son to another hospital”
The mother of a man who is in a coma accuses the administration of the Emergency Medicine Institute of refusing to transfer her son to another hospital. The relatives decided to take him to another hospital after doctors advised them to donate the man’s liver.
The man is a firefighter, but worked also as a taxicab driver at night. He was taken to the Emergency Medicine Institute as a result of a road accident in the morning of August 6.
In a news conference at IPN, the man’s mother Eudochia Orzu said her son was conscious when an ambulance transported him to the hospital. But the doctors examined him only when he lost consciousness, after they waited for over three hours in the halls of the medical institution. It was decided to operate him. After surgery the man didn’t regain consciousness and has been in a coma for 44 days.
The woman said the doctors told the family to better donate the man’s liver. Terrified, the man’s relatives asked to transfer the man to the Neurology and Neurosurgery Institute, but met with refusal. Moreover, Eudochia Orzu was threatened with legal proceedings if she makes this case public and she thus sought help from lawyers.
Fiodor Ghelici, who heads the public control commission of the Civil Society Council working under the President of Moldova, became involved in the examination of this case and now says that “it smells of and there are suspicions of organ selling”. The collected evidence was submitted to the National Anticorruption Center and the Ministry of the Interior with the request of opening an investigation.
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IPN Agency admits to the mistake and apologizes for reproducing the sentence formulated by participants in the news conference ““it smells of and there are suspicions of organ selling”. (min.18.57 of the news conference), which didn’t seem not exactly literary to it, through the formula ”There are suspicions that the Emergency Medicine Institute is a center for selling human organs”, which it took from the title of the news conference, for which, as the disclaimer attached to the invitation for the media stipulates, the organizers of the press event bear complete responsibility: ”The organizers of the events – not IPN News Agency – bear exclusive responsibility for the correctness and essence of the invitation to the event, which is presented for distribution”.
It should be also noted that the material from the news conference was reproduced in a “news” style when the author of the news article cannot add own comments and IPN Agency this time again respected the rules of the genre. This means that the rest of the objections should be addressed to those who, in the opinion of the administration of the Emergency Medicine Institute, “distorted the real facts and circumstances”. IPN only reproduced assertions made publicly in a public sphere.
Also, IPN Agency expresses its readiness to offer the right to reply to representatives of the Emergency Medicine Institute, as it was asked by the preliminary request, even if neither the legislation nor other acceptable general norms of conduct envision two punishments for one and the same mistake. This is noted because the next day after the news conference, the Emergency Medicine Institute issued a press release by which it expressed its disagreement with the statements made by the organizers, which IPN Agency published without delay, based on the professional deontological norms and common sense.
Valeriu Vasilică, IPN director
