MAGYAR JETI ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT 7 of the law. This would result in an undue burden for publishers, since they could only publish information whose veracity they had established beyond any doubt, making reporting on controversial matters impossible. The applicant company argued that the judicial practice was unconstitutional since it did not examine whether a publisher’s conduct had been in compliance with the ethical and professional rules of journalism, but only whether it had disseminated an untrue statement. In the area of the Internet, where the news value of information was very short-lived, there was simply no time to verify the truthfulness of every statement. 18. Two of the defendants also lodged a petition for review with the Kúria. The applicant company argued that the second-instance judgment restricted the freedom of the press in a disproportionate manner, as the company had only reported on an important issue of public concern, in compliance with its journalistic duties. It emphasised that, as established by the lower-level courts, its report on the issue had been balanced. It further maintained that the statement of J.Gy. qualified as an opinion rather than a fact. In any event, the company had not been engaged in dissemination but had merely fulfilled its journalistic obligation of reporting. 19. The Kúria upheld the second-instance judgment in a judgment of 10 June 2015 (served on the applicant company on 4 September 2015), reiterating that J.Gy.’s statements were statements of fact and that the defendants had failed to prove their veracity. Although the term jobbikos was used in colloquial language, in the case at issue J.Gy. had explicitly referred to the political party and its role in the incident. As regards the question of whether the applicant company’s activity constituted dissemination of information, the Kúria found: “Both in criminal law and other cases of civil law, the Kúria has taken the legal standpoint ... that dissemination is carried out by sharing or making public any information, as a result of which anyone can have access to the given content. The Internet is only one possible alternative for publishing; it is a forum for dissemination, meaning that information and facts are shared through a computer network. An Internet link to one’s own publication serves as an appendix; it becomes accessible and readable with a single click. The Civil Code has established objective liability for dissemination, irrespective of the good or bad faith of the disseminator. In the Kúria’s view, requiring media outlets not to make injurious statements accessible does not constitute a restriction of freedom of the press or freedom of expression; nor is it an obligation on them which in practice cannot be satisfied.” 20. On 19 December 2017 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant company’s constitutional complaint. It emphasised the secondinstance court’s finding that providing a hyperlink to content qualified as dissemination of facts. Furthermore, dissemination was unlawful even if the disseminator had not identified itself with the content of the third party’s statement and even if it had wrongly trusted the truthfulness of the statement. 21. The Constitutional Court also reiterated its previous case-law concerning reporting about public figures’ press conferences, stating that such conduct did not qualify as dissemination if the report was unbiased and objective, the statement concerned a matter of public interest, and the

Select target paragraph3