European Pravda receives a demand to retract reported information about Halushchenko

European Pravda received a letter from the lawyer of Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, threatening to sue the media outlet for their news report titled “Halushchenko heard calling the EU ambassador a 'middle-level clerk' in the VRU, energy ministry denies”. The lawyer demands that European Pravda “immediately retract the information, which is misleading”, reports European Pravda chief editor Serhiy Sydorenko, posting screenshots of the lawyer’s statement.

Photo by Serhiy Sydorenko on Facebook

Photo by Serhiy Sydorenko on Facebook

Photo by Serhiy Sydorenko on Facebook

The news reported on Halushchenko’s alleged remark about the EU ambassador during a dispute with MP Inna Sovsun.

Serhiy Sydorenko said that following an address from the Energy Ministry, the media outlet immediately supplemented the news with the Ministry’s position and changed the headline. However, the journalist added that the lawyer did not seem to be aware of this and “attempted manipulation” in his letter to the team it by omitting parts of the quotes that were present in both the news and the transcript of the meeting.

“We are a constitutional state, and the Minister is a live person too and is entitled to entertain himself however he wants in parallel with his official's work. In particular, he certainly has the right to hire a lawyer of any qualification level to (threaten to go to court – redacted) conduct unnecessary correspondence with journalists. Legally, this does not raise any doubt,” Sydorenko writes.

He also notes that the lawyer’s address appears to be an attempt to discredit Halushchenko.

“I really, really hope that this is the case, and in that case I will gladly write a post about it and provide the Minister’s assistants with all the documents so that they punish the lawyer who is trying to discredit him. But for some reason I don’t have much faith that this is the case,” Sydorenko wrote.

In a comment to Detector Media, Serhiy Sydorenko said that such behavior could be an attempt at pressure to discourage the media outlet from writing news critical of the Minister, “so as to save ourselves the headache.”

“But this is just my assumption, I cannot confirm it,” Sydorenko noted.

He also added that overall Ukraine has never had such a situation “where such pressure on the media from officials had the effect they hoped for.” Instead, the effect was opposite.