TFL Vsebine / Revija Javna uprava

Po ustavnem režimu se sme politične funkcionarje tudi ostro kritizirati, objektivno žaliti in osebno napadati, če je to mogoče upravičiti s prepričljivo stvarno podlago. To se lahko počne v nadzorni in demokratizacijski funkciji, ki jo v demokratični družbi opravljajo javnost, tisk in mediji. Tako pravno filozofijo svobode tiska morajo odločno in trajno uresničevati in braniti tudi sodišča. Vsega in vsakršnega tiska ne gre obravnavati enako, ker se razlikuje po verodostojnosti, intelektualni ravni in posledično po značilnostih t. i. povprečnega bralca takega tiska. Politikov kot oseb, razen ob prisiljujočih izjemah, tudi ni mogoče ločeno obravnavati kot politikov in kot (družinskih) oseb, če med obema obstaja stvarna povezava. Pri sodni presoji primerov ostre časopisne kritike na račun politika morajo sodišča upoštevati vse značilnosti in vse posebnosti konkretnega primera. S končno sodno odločitvijo ne smejo varovati politika pred ostrino kritike, niti bralce pred lastno nevednostjo in nepremišljenostjo. Nasprotno, varovati morajo sporočilno svobodo časopisa – pred ekscesi prevlade dnevne strankarske politike, nevednimi in nepremišljenimi bralci in pred tem, da bi se časopisnim sporočilom preprosto »pripisovalo« tisto, kar bi ta sporočila (objave) lahko pomenila, namesto da bi se resno upoštevalo tisto, kar so dejansko pomenila in želela pomeniti. Sodbe sodišč per se pa morajo pomeniti graditev doktrine in konceptualiziranih standarov svobode izražanja in tiska. Biti morajo stabilen pravodajni vir, ne le primer konceptualno razdrobljenega reševanja konkretnih sporov. Zadovoljiti morajo standard konceptualne predvidljivosti, uravnotežene s preteklimi precedensi in tako postavljene v funkcijo pravne varnosti. Ustavnosodni precedens v primeru Grims proti Mladini teh kriterijev ni izpolnil.

There is a right – under the umbrella of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression – to express sharp and strong criticism, even objectively offending and to publicly use attacking remarks regarding politicians, their behaviour, communications, ideas, personality or stance in general – and if such remarks do have substantial foundations. This can be performed within a supervisional and democratizational function which the civil society, press and the media have in a democratic society. Such legal philosophy of freedom of the press must be firmly and permanently exercised and defended by the courts. All newspapers and every type of newspaper must not be evaluated and regarded in the same manner, due to the fact there are vast differences among newspapers regarding their credibility, intellectual level and in consequence the characteristics of the so called average reader – of such a type of newspaper and of a particular newspaper at hand. One cannot separately evaluate the politicians as public figures-functionaries and as common (family) persons, except in a few cases of obvious and pressing exceptions where there is no substantial and reasonable connection between those two. When deciding cases of strong criticism of the politicians, courts must consider all characteristics and all of the particularities of the concrete case. The final judicial judgment is not supposed to give protection to the politicians against the sharpness of the criticism or to the readers against their own ignorance and thoughtlessness. To the contrary, courts must protect the communicative freedom of newspapers – against the excesses of the dominance of the politicians, of the political parties and against the ignorance and thoughtlessness of the readers. Courts must also avoid plain subscription as the argumentative technique when deciding how the communicative message (substance of a certain publication) of the newspaper could be perceived or understood by its average readers – they must instead concentrate on what the particular and possibly controversial message actually was and what it really meant according to real and proofable motivation of its author. Every judicial decision per se should be constructed to have the nature of a constitutional doctrine and conceptualized standard of the freedom of expression and press. Judicial decisions should be with the ambition of having the status and normative force of a legal norm. Courts should therefore restrain from only solving disputes in a pure instrumental manner and conceptually fragmented. They should meet the standard of conceptual predictability, putting it in a functional balance with all the previous precedents. Only such judicial technique can be defended as a genuine law-making process and can comply to the constitutional principle of the legal security. Constitutional law-making precedent in the case of Grims v. Mladina did not successfully fulfil this task.

Understanding the Freedom of Expression and the Press: With Conceptualizing Analisys of the Case Grims v. Mladina (2016)