.png)
.png)
Former One News editor guilty of ‘misleading information’
Head of government communications Kurt Farrugia fined €2,500, found guilty of publishing misleading information and damaging a person’s reputation.
11 November 2013, 12:00am
Chris Mangion
Chris Mangion
1 min read
Kurt Farrugia (right) with Joseph Muscat during the 2013 election campaign
Head of government communications Kurt Farrugia was fined €2,500 after a court found him guilty of disseminating misleading information during a hot political climate.
Farrugia was fined in his capacity as former editor of ONE News.
The case dates back to 2011 during the divorce referendum campaign. Brigitte Vassallo, manager at an elderly home in Mellieha, filed a libel case against Farrugia after ONE news carried a report accusing her of influencing elderly residents to vote against the referendum.
According to the court, attempts were made to damage Vassallo's reputation after the news report described her as the wife of a PN candidate and being related to the former prime minister's chief of staff Edgar Galea Curmi.
Magistrate Francesco Depasquale said that through his statements, Farrugia intended to cause clear damage to Vassallo.
"While it is a journalist's duty to inform the public about what is happening, he is also duty bound not to mislead people and damage people's reputation", Depasquale ruled.
Chris Mangion is MaltaToday’s photojournalist, joining the newspaper in 2013.
In 1995...
•
@A Pace: I never cease to wonder how screwed up you people are -- you always justify the actions of the PL by saying that the PN did the same. So in your book, two wrongs make a right, yes?
I actually believe that we would be better off without the political media, because they are way too economical with the truth. As for Super One, as this case shows, it has never cared about personally harming people and ruining their reputation, no matter how unjustly, as long as it can make some political mileage.
•
If the courts had to fine the PN for misleading information they would be fined millions!!
•
Are we surprised? Not only that, but for the one person who actually went to the enormous hassle of taking this man to court for having lied about her, there are literally hundreds who, for a multitude of reasons, decided not to.
For justice to really be done, the fine should be multiplied many hundreds of times! That would teach such people to tell the truth instead of to say whatever they can spin to their political advantage, regardless of what the truth really is!!!
•
People keep asking: why any Pl individual found guilty of nearly similar cases relating to newspapers editors etc are always fined double the amount while others who are always fined half the amount.
