Press Council: Delfi Violated Ethics in Story About Deputy Mayor
After discussing Tallinn Deputy Mayor Mihhail Kõlvart's complaint related to an article published on the Delfi news site earlier this month, the Press Council today ruled that Delfi was in the wrong.
The Press Council, the self-regulatory body for Estonian news sites, said Delfi violated good journalistic practice by basing a story on a comment made by a reader of Delfi's Russian site who misquoted the deputy mayor.
Among other issues, said the council, the problem was that Delfi did not give Kõlvart a chance to provide his side of the story, and that it used misleading words in the headline and lead of the story.
Kõlvart was alleged to have told Narodnoe Radio, a Russian-language station, that phasing out state-funded Russian-language education on the secondary school level was a threat to national security. Not only was this a misquotation, but Delfi went even further in the headline, saying that Kõlvart had "threatened" the Estonian state.
The Press Council said use of the word "threatened" in the headline and "security threat" in the first sentence were misleading.
Delfi, which published a correction on April 11 - six days after the story - said it disagreed with the ruling.
In its response to the Press Council, Delfi said that the story was based on one radio listener's interpretation of the Kõlvart interview, and that the listener had made the interpretation in a specific context.
Delfi said that a listener operating with the prior knowledge that Kõlvart had been criticized in the national security's 2011 yearbook as susceptible to foreign influence could reasonably interpret Kõlvart's on-air remarks in the same way as the listener.