INDEX.HU ZRT v. HUNGARY JUDGMENT punishment of a journalist for assisting in the dissemination of statements made by another person in an interview would seriously hamper the contribution of the press to discussion of matters of public interest and should not be envisaged unless there are particularly strong reasons for doing so (see Jersild, cited above, § 35). In such cases, a distinction needs to be made according to whether the statements emanate from the journalist or are quotations from others (see Pedersen and Baadsgaard, cited above, § 77). (b) Application of those principles to the present case 27. The parties did not dispute that the domestic courts’ judgments amounted to an “interference” with the applicant company’s exercise of the right to freedom of expression. The Court also finds that the interference complained of was prescribed by law, namely Article 2:45 of the Civil Code as in force at the time, and pursued a legitimate aim referred to in Article 10 § 2 of the Convention, namely the “protection of the reputation or rights of others”. What remains to be established is whether the interference was “necessary in a democratic society”. The Court is called upon to analyse the decisions of the Hungarian courts in the light of all the facts of the case, including the publication in question and the circumstances in which it was written. 28. The first of those circumstances was the fact that the applicant company published the statements in question together with a description of the campaign initiated by another media outlet with a view to counterbalancing allegedly defamatory media reports targeting opposition activists. Furthermore, the applicant company made it clear that the story had originated from A.V., who himself was unsure about what exactly had happened. Moreover, the article explained that A.V.’s story about J.A.’s drunken firing of his weapon was unlikely to be true given the lenient penalty J.A. had received. 29. In the domestic proceedings against the applicant company the domestic courts treated the impugned statements concerning J.A. as unrelated to his conduct in his official capacity and not concerning a debate of public interest, and therefore as falling outside the scope of the right to freedom of expression. 30. The Court cannot agree with the domestic courts’ finding that the right to freedom of expression was inapplicable to the applicant company’s conduct. Admittedly, A.V.’s statements could be considered polemical. The Court notes, however, that what the article in question described as a “soldier’s tale” was the only statement referred to by the domestic courts in inferring that the article had been injurious to J.A.’s reputation. The domestic courts did not examine the article published by the applicant company as a whole, but rather focused on the account given by A.V. detached from its general context. 7