NISKASAARI AND OTAVAMEDIA OY v. FINLAND JUDGMENT 13 broadcast by the Finnish national public-service broadcasting company some years earlier and, in particular, on the manner in which these documentaries had been made. 56. As to the veracity of the information, the domestic courts drew different conclusions: at first instance the District Court found that both the first applicant and the complainant had had grounds for their views and that they had not said anything that was clearly untrue. On the other hand, the Appeal Court held that it was not proved that the complainant had disseminated wrong or misleading information in the television documentaries in question and that the first applicant did not therefore have strong reasons or probable cause to hold his own accusations to be true. It also appears from the Appeal Court judgment that, inter alia, different statistical information existed as far as the conserved forest area in Finland was concerned and that it could not therefore be said that the figures given by the complainant were fabricated. 57. The Court notes also the severity of the sanctions imposed on the applicants. The first applicant was convicted under criminal law and was ordered to pay 40 day-fines totalling EUR 240. He was also ordered to pay EUR 2,000 plus interest in damages to the complainant. The applicant company was ordered, together with the first applicant, to pay EUR 4,000 plus interest in damages to the complainant as well as the latter’s costs and expenses of EUR 25,500, plus interest, in total. The amounts of compensation must be regarded as substantial, given that the maximum compensation afforded to victims of serious violence varies between EUR 3,000 and 5,000 (see paragraph 24 above). 58. While the Appeal Court made some limited reference to Article 10 of the Convention and to case-law and legal literature on Article 10 in its judgment (see paragraph 18 above), thereby recognising as a matter of principle the relevance of Article 10 for the domestic decision whether to convict the first applicant of defamation, it did not, as required by Article 10, proceed to a sufficient evaluation of the actual impact of the first applicant’s right to freedom of expression on the outcome of the case. In particular, the Appeal Court did not balance the first applicant’s right to freedom of expression (under Article 10 of the Convention), on the basis of the relevant criteria (as summarised at paragraph 49 above), in any considered way against the complainant’s conflicting right to reputation (under Article 8 of the Convention). It does not emerge from the reasoning of the Appeal Court what “pressing social need” in the present case was taken to justify protecting the complainant’s right to reputation over the freedom of expression of the applicants, in particular as both the first applicant and the complainant were professional journalists discussing the limits of critical journalism. Nor is it clear whether, according to the Appeal Court, the resultant interference with the applicants’ freedom of expression was proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued (see paragraph 18 above).