Right of reply not a soapbox for defamatory allegations, court rules

A magistrate has dismissed a criminal libel case filed by the Ramblers’ Association against David Lindsay as editor of The Malta Independent, over the paper’s delayed publication of an “abusive” right of reply.

The Ramblers’ Association had gone to the police last December after the Malta Independent on Sunday failed to publish its reply to an article about a dispute over access to a family- owned agricultural property in Simblija, Rabat in the next edition or the one after that.

An article, titled “Whistleblower claims discriminatory and selective campaign linked to Ian Borg” had been published on 24 July 2016 and was an interview with Noel Ciantar, a man from a family of farmers who had cultivated the agricultural property for generations. Ciantar had claimed that a campaign by the Ramblers’ Association was attacking his family’s legal rights over the property by demanding that he gives public access to the area and that “this was instigated by Dr. Ian Borg when he was Mayor of Dingli.”

Magistrate Francesco Depasquale noted that the article also addressed allegations that Ciantar had made against Borg due to the fact that Borg, and the association, had been requesting access over his private property when the same was not being asked of other private property in which Borg’s relatives had a commercial interest.

The Ramblers’ Association had felt the need to reply to the comments Ciantar made to the newspaper and had sent a letter with its reply on 28 July. The Association’s letter was not published in the subsequent two editions of the paper, but was eventually published in its entirety on 30 October 2016, with the title “Fabrication against the Ramblers’ Association.”

The court considered that the paper’s editor, David Lindsay, had explained that the cause of the delay in publishing the Association’s reply was the fact that he felt it contained statements that could be defamatory and had sought legal advice before publishing it. The court, after reading the letter, agreed that the comments it contained could be considered as defamatory. The right to not publish potentially defamatory rights of reply is protected under the Press Act.

In his judgment dismissing the case, Magistrate Francesco Depasquale pointed out that the right of a person to reply to attacks on their reputation did not extend to permit the person to make defamatory allegations against third parties. Doing so “is nothing other than an abuse of the right,” ruled the court.

Noting that the case had been filed two months after the reply airing the Association’s views had been published, therefore after the situation had already been resolved, the court found for defendant David Lindsay and ordered the plaintiff Association to bear the legal costs of the case.