Kath.ch journalist must appear in Zurich court for defamation
Published: Tuesday, Jan 23rd 2024, 04:50
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A journalist from the Catholic Media Center is said to have denigrated a German manager. She is said to have accused him of having an anti-democratic attitude. The journalist is contesting the penalty order at Zurich District Court today, Tuesday.
The article was published after the CEO of a German company was uninvited to speak at the plenary assembly of the Chur deanery on November 10, 2022. The Vicar General had arranged for this because concerned members of the deanery had informed him about the speaker.
The public prosecutor's office accuses the journalist of creating the impression that the manager is close to the AfD and has anti-Semitic views.
Various passages are quoted in the penalty order, such as "has also attracted attention through anti-democratic positioning" or "spread conspiracy myths about an alleged cultural Marxism conspiracy of the German-Jewish Frankfurt School".
Other media quoted
The journalist took the accusations from other media and the commissioner against anti-Semitism of the state government of Baden-Württemberg, as the original article shows. This has since been supplemented with a statement from the manager in which he rejects all the accusations.
With the article, the journalist at least accepted the risk of offending the victim's feeling of being an honorable person, according to the penalty order.
The public prosecutor sentenced the 56-year-old to a conditional fine of 40 times 120 francs for defamation. This was with a probationary period of two years.
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