6
MAGYAR JETI ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT
veracity of the facts[;] therefore they acted in a manner that would generally be
expected of them in the given situation.
...”
15. The applicant company appealed, arguing that public opinion
associated the notion of “Jobbik” not so much with the political party but
with anti-Roma ideology, and the name had become a collective noun for
anti-Roma organisations. According to the applicant company, the content
of the statement had not been offensive towards the political party, since it
was publicly known that Jobbik had been engaged in hatred-inciting
activities. The applicant company also emphasised that by making the
interview with the first defendant available in the form of a link but not
associating the applicant company with the video’s content, it had not
repeated the statements and had not disseminated falsehoods.
16. On 25 September 2014 the Debrecen Court of Appeal upheld the
first-instance decision. It held that the statement by J.Gy. had qualified as a
statement of fact because it had given the impression to the average
audience that the football supporters had been organisationally linked to the
political party. The court found that the statement had been injurious to the
political party since it had associated the latter with socially reprehensible
conduct. As regards the applicant company in particular, it held:
“... With regard to the fifth defendant’s [the applicant company’s] reference in its
appeal, the court of first-instance correctly established that making a false statement
available through a link, even without identifying with it, qualified as dissemination of
facts.
Dissemination (or circulation) is the sharing of a piece of news as thought-based
content and making it available for others. Contrary to the fifth defendant’s viewpoint
as expressed in its appeal, an infringement of the law by dissemination occurs even if
the disseminator does not identify with the statement, and even if the disseminator’s
trust in the veracity of the statement is ungrounded. Making lawful content available
in any form qualifies as dissemination; and the disseminator bears objective
responsibility for sharing another person’s unlawful statement owing to the
occurrence of the sharing.
Based on the grammatical and taxonomical interpretation of dissemination as
defined in Article 78 § 2 of the Civil Code, it occurs by means of the sharing of
information, which makes the content in question accessible to anyone. The essence
of dissemination is the sharing of information, and owing to the objective legal
consequence, it does not matter what the goal of the sharing was, or whether the
disseminator acted in good or bad faith; nor do the scope of publicity or the gravity of
the infringement have any relevance.
...”
17. On 1 December 2014 the applicant company lodged a constitutional
complaint under Act no. CLI of 2011 on the Constitutional Court (“the
Constitutional Court Act”), arguing in essence that under the Civil Code,
media outlets assumed objective liability for dissemination of false
information, which according to judicial practice meant that media outlets
were held liable for the veracity of statements that clearly emanated from
third parties. Thus, even if a media organ prepared a balanced and unbiased
article on a matter of public interest, it could still be found to be in violation