This year – knowing that the Onet journalist was working on the material – she filed a private indictment against Magdalena Rigamonti, considered by some lawyers and organizations defending media freedom to be an example of a SLAPP lawsuit aimed at intimidating the journalist.
“Chiefs” against censorship. “It was a subtle method”
In Monday's program of “Naczelni”, this decision was commented on by both the author of the reportage and the management of Onet.
— I understand the nervousness of the heroine of the text, because every person who is aware that something unpleasant about her may appear, fights to prevent this text from being published. Mrs. Kos-Krauze uses her image. He uses public money. Therefore, he is a public figure. So we do not describe her private life, explained editor-in-chief Bartosz Węglarczyk.
– The court issued a preventive ban because it decided that it would result in defamation – said Andrzej Stankiewicz, deputy editor-in-chief of Onet. — It was a subtle method. They wanted to create a situation where the publisher would go to Magda and tell her: we won't publish it because we'll get hit hard, he explained.
The author of the “forbidden” text, Magdalena Rigamonti, also commented on the matter. — I hoped that censorship ended in June 1989. I am absolutely surprised that the artist wants to censor me as a journalist and Onet as a medium. I hope that the court, as an element of our democracy, will act democratically, not communistically. Preventive censorship is prohibited in Poland. The judges are aware of this, said Magdalena Rigamonti.
