The Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit against the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper and an editor of an Åland newspaper accused of violating a person’s privacy in a news article.
In the dismissal, the couple, who had worked for the news agency Nya Åland, were released from paying the fine imposed by the Court of Appeal.
The case began with an article published online in 2016 about a police investigation into an Åland man. The article did not identify the man, but it did include a link to an article by Long Play, an investigative journalism publication, that published his name.
The article said the man is suspected of aggravated cheating on his elderly and weakened wife.
Long Play’s article dealt with suspicions about a man who ran a cinema in Turku. It included, among other things, allegations of copyright infringement. The book also found that a 60-year-old man was married to a memory-impaired woman over the age of 80 who owned a movie theater property.
The district court and the Court of Appeal sentenced the man to probation for an accounting offense and a copyright offense related to the operation of a movie theater. In the original decision, the district court drew attention to the fact that the man had run the cinema on behalf of his elderly wife, taking advantage of his deteriorating health.
The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that there is a societal benefit in dealing with suspicions of economic exploitation of vulnerable people.
The court said that because the linked article was based on an interview with a suspect, a New Åland journalist and journalist could safely assume that the article had been published with the man’s consent.
For this reason, the court said it did not find that linking to the site from which he was identified would violate what could be considered acceptable.
The Turku Court of Appeal previously fined the defendants in May 2020, while the Åland District Court dismissed the lawsuit in March 2018.
Source: The Nordic Page