The Press Council requested the portal Basarabia.md to offer public apologies to activist Domnica Cemortan for the publication of an article taken from a blog, which defamed this, affecting her dignity and honor. The Press Council reminds that the editorial staffs bear responsibility for the whole editorial content, including for articles taken from other authors, IPN reports.
In her complaint to the Press Council, Domnica Cemortan asked to determine if an article published on the portal Basarabia.md meets the journalistic deontological norms. She complained that the author defames her publicly and violates her rights to a private life and to dignity. The Press Council notified the portal’s administration, which yet said that the article was taken from a blog and shows the opinion of the author, not of the editorial staff.
Analyzing the given article, the Council’s members established that offensive and even defamatory expressions are used in the text. The Council adopted a statement saying that the editorial staffs bear deontological responsibility for the whole editorial content, including for articles taken from other authors. “The given article contains a direct attack on the person and really defamatory expressions and the editorial staff should remove them from the text or should not use it, especially because it is not informative in character, but represents the opinion of a person about another person,” said the Press Council’s head Ludmila Andronic.
The Press Council ascertained the violation by the portal’s editorial staff of a number of articles of the Journalist’s Deontological Code, including of the norms that oblige the journalists to respect the person’s rights to a private life and to dignity and not to allow interference in the private life of a persons. It also reiterated the legal and deontological obligation of the websites to moderate the comments on the articles published on them.
The Council will ask that the portal Basarabia.md should publicly apologize to activist Domnica Cemortan for defaming her and should remove the article and the comments on it from the website or this could be sued.
