Published on 24 February 2025
 
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 42415/23
Vladimir KOVAČEVIĆ
against Bosnia and Herzegovina
lodged on 28 November 2023
communicated on 3 February 2025
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns civil defamation proceedings which the applicant, a journalist, instituted against a private media outlet for republishing an article in which he had been portrayed as an opposition journalist, a recipient of the USAID grant and connected to an alleged coup d’état in the Republika Srpska. The domestic courts dismissed the claim finding that the applicant had not shown that his reputation had been damaged. On 11 July 2024 the Constitutional Court dismissed his appeal as manifestly ill-founded referring to earlier decisions of domestic courts (see below) in which the applicant’s identical claim submitted against a public media outlet had been granted. The Constitutional Court held that it would not be justified to find another violation of the applicant’s rights each time the same text, the contents of which had already been known to the public, was republished, as that would be detrimental to the pre-eminent role of the press in a democratic society and its duty to act as a “public watchdog”.
In the earlier set of civil defamation proceedings against the public media outlet, concerning the republishing of the same article, the domestic courts allowed the applicant’s claim, found the article in question to be defamatory and awarded non-pecuniary damages. These findings were upheld by the Constitutional Court on 7 September 2022.
Relying on Article 8 of the Convention the applicant complains about the dismissal of his second defamation claim against the private media outlet.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of Article 8 of the Convention arising from the outcome of the defamation proceedings against the private media outlet?