New Defamation Ordinance to provide full rights to journalists
LAHORE- The proposed Defamation Ordinance, 2002, provides full rights to journalists if the matter commented on is fair and in the public interest and published in good faith.
It further says that it will not infringe upon the rights of journalists if the matter published or produced is based on truth and reflects public good.
According to highly placed sources, the President, General Pervez Musharraf, has directed that the proposed draft be “directly linked up with Freedom of Information Ordinance” which is under preparation by the Law Ministry. The sources said that both the drafts would be made public simultaneously after vetting.
The draft doesn’t show anywhere that it would penalize a media man without providing the person a chance to defend. An important section of the draft bears out explicitly that “in defamation proceedings a person has a defense if he/she shows that it is based on truth and was made for public good.”
In the next clause, the draft goes so far as to provide defense if the author can assert that the matter commented is fair and in the public interest and is an expression of opinion and not an assertion of fact and was published in good faith.” It also protects if the plaintiff gave assent for its publication.
The idea behind the drafting the Ordinance is to protect citizens and organizations from slander and libel. It defines defamation as “any wrongful act or publication or circulation of a false statement or representation made orally, aurally, or in written or visual form which injures the reputation of a person or tends to reduce him to ridicule, unjust criticism, dislike, contempt or hatred shall be actionable as defamation”.
With such a definition to be the crux of the law, the ordinance could, by no means, be called unjust and draconian. Its definition also explains that it would be equally applicable to radio, TV, cable, Internet, or published material without exception to any in the age of information.
The law also defines slander and libel. According to it, “any false oral or aural statement or representation that amounts to defamation shall be actionable as slander”, and “any false written documentary or visual statement or representation made either by ordinary form or expression or by electronic or other modem means or device that amounts to defamation shall be actionable as libel.” All the stress lies on false statement in this section which the media believes in. The main focus and objective of the law is to protect everybody from defaming by any means.
The law, however, provides ‘absolute privilege’ in certain categories. It says, “Any publication of statement made in the federa1 or provincial legislatures, reports, papers, notes and proceedings ordered to be published by either house of the parliament or by the provincial assemblies, or relating to judicial proceedings ordered to be published by the court or any report, note, or matter written or published by or under the authority of a Government, shall have the protection of absolute privilege.”
The objective to include this section is to provide the privilege to the Parliament to expunge any matter or to a court to declare something not publishable if it deems that publishing of the matter is not going to be in the national interest.
There is yet another section inserted in the draft ordinance as “Qualified privilege”. It says that “any fair and accurate publication of parliamentary proceedings or judicial proceedings which the public may attend and statements made to the proper authorities in order to procure the redress of public grievances shall have the protection of qualified privi1ege”
Source: The Nation
Date:6/3/2002
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