The Austrian online medium “Exxpress” has been convicted of defamation. It had reported untrue things about Tagesspiegel reporter Sebastian Leber, which brought him hatred and death wishes.
The Express has now been sentenced to pay compensation to Sebastian Leber. In addition, the online medium not only has to pay the costs of the first instance, but also the costs of the appeals process. Furthermore, it became Judgment publication on his homepage sentenced.
According to the Viennese district court, the Exxpress published an article in November 2021 with the content that Sebastian Leber “wanted to bring seven migrants illegally across the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to make a sentimental story out of it”. The court found that this objective facts of defamation was produced.
As the court explained, Sebastian Leber was commissioned by the editor-in-chief of the Tagesspiegel in November 2021 to investigate the repeated allegations of “push-backs” against the Croatian police on site at the Bosnian-Croatian border. After several days of research in the border area, on the morning of November 19, 2021, the reporter became aware of a group of migrants who had been arrested by the Croatian police after crossing the border.
The regional court also clarified that when Leber saw them, the migrants and the police officers surrounding them were more than 100 meters away from him on a hill. Leber then approached the officers to further investigate the incident by questioning the Croatian border police, whereupon he was also arrested for illegally crossing the border.
Leber was not picked up together with the migrants, but only some time later and separately. As the court went on to explain in its judgment, Leber did not encourage the migrants to enter the country and did not “drag” them. In addition, he didn’t want to invent a sentimental story, but wanted to work through the pushbacks on the Croatian border in a journalistic manner, following a research assignment from his editor-in-chief.
How the Expresspress author proceeded
The Tagesspiegel reporter took legal action against the reporting by the Exxpress. The author of the Express article in question then gave in the process before the district court of Vienna admitted that he had never contacted the Croatian police, Leber or the Tagesspiegel – and had never tried to do so.
As the Viennese district court explained in its judgment, the Exxpress author had read a tweet about Leber’s arrest on Twitter. However, the Exxpress author then neither contacted Leber nor “his editor-in-chief or other employees of the Tagesspiegel nor the Croatian police, although this would have been possible in each case. Also, the author of the article did not do any research on the original source – the tweet.”
In December 2022, the Vienna Higher Regional Court confirmed the guilt of the online medium in the second instance. the judgment publicationto which the Express was sentenced, reads as follows:
“Due to the publication of the article on November 21, 2021 in the online medium “eXXpress”, which can be accessed at https://exxpress.at, with the headline “Employee of the left-wing Tagesspiegel arrested as a smuggler” with the analogous content that the applicant Sebastian Leber has seven migrants illegally across the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to create a sentimental story from it, the objective facts of the slander were produced in a medium. The respondent web eXXpress Medien Holding GmbH was therefore sentenced to pay compensation to the applicant Sebastian Leber and to publish the judgment. Regional Court for Criminal Matters Vienna, Section 45, on March 28, 2022”
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