Khmelnytskyi court of appeal dismissed MP’s complaint against journalists

Photo credit: ngp.ua.info (Big board with legend on it: Capital repair of road made with support of MP Andriy Shynkovych and team "For precise deeds") Khmelnytskyi court of appeal dismissed the appeal of MP Andriy Shynkovych against the company "Production Center" Exclusive "and left the decision of the court of first instance unchanged, according to the court ruling of August 8, as Independent civil portal reported. The secretary in the court  Yuliya Saldan said to Independent civil portal that the appeal court agreed with the trial court's conclusions meaning that Shynkovych, as a MP is a public figure and had to be open for scrutiny by ordinary citizens and the media. The information disseminated by the press concerned solely the professional activity of a politician and not his private life. In addition, the plaintiff failed to provide the court with proper and admissible evidences that he had indeed sustained moral damage or other negative consequences due to the video report about him. The Khmelnytskyi court of appeal considered that the information did not contain undeniable statements of facts, but was based on evaluative judgments. Such information had criticism of Shynkovich's activity in public office, and the scope of such criticism is much broader. As to the expert's linguistic conclusion of the text of the report, the court of appeal found it not unambiguous. Therefore, the court of first instance had not accepted it as the evidence. We will remind, the MP Andriy Shynkovych sued the TV channel "Exclusive" because of the report "How MPs in Khmelnytskyi lqy hqnds on someone else's work", which was aired in November 2017. In particular, journalists criticized Shynkovych for promoted himself saying it had been his merit to repair the public road in his district. In fact, as reported by a representative of the road service in the region, the financing of the disputed section of the road came from "customs" funds and credit resources. No funds from public budget were attracted.