FMT sets aside Guan Eng’s judgment on appeal

Court of Appeal holds article entitled ‘Guan Eng has failed, says NGO’ temperate and not defamatory.

(Free Malaysia Today) – FMT today successfully overturned an RM330,000 judgment entered by the Penang High Court last year in favour of the state’s Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng.

The High Court judgment, handed down on August 4 last year by Judicial Commissioner Nordin Hassan, had found that FMT’s news report entitled “Guan Eng has failed, says NGO” published on FMT in December 2013 had libelled the DAP leader by alleging that he did not have the calibre to be the state’s Chief Minister.

However, the Court of Appeal today unanimously reversed that ruling, holding instead that the article was not defamatory of him.

In a brief oral judgment, the appellate court’s three-judge panel led by Justice Hamid Sultan Abu Backer held that the contents of the article were of public interest and that the article had been written “in a temperate tone.” Justices Mary Lim and Zabariah Mohd Yusof also sat to hear the appeal.

Authored by former FMT journalist, Karunakaran Sinivasan, the article was a report on a press conference held by renowned activist Professor Jimmy Lim lamenting the state of heritage preservation in Penang and calling on the Penang chief minister to “walk his political talk” by taking steps to ensure the protection of the state’s coveted Unesco World Heritage status.

Professor Lim and Karunakaran were also named defendants in the suit.

Guan Eng was represented by N Mureli, while Baljit Singh and V Amareson acted as counsel for Professor Lim.

Earlier, counsel Clement Lopez, who represented FMT and Karunakaran, had submitted that the article was a neutral and temperate account of what transpired at the press conference, and that a holistic reading of the article would show that it was not libellous of Guan Eng.

He submitted that the entire High Court decision had turned on the meaning of one word in the article.

Quoting Professor Lim, the report had stated that the Chief Minister had “allowed the demolition of many heritage and historical structures ……. to make way for sky-scraping structures, especially hotels and posh condominiums.”

The article also quoted the activist as alleging that the Chief Minister had “allowed” the destruction of heritage sites such as Kg Buah Pala and Bukit Relau, popularly known as “Botak Hill.”

Lopez argued that the word “allowed” in the context of that news report neither suggested that the Chief Minister was complicit in the destruction of Penang’s heritage nor that he had sanctioned it.

Instead, he said that the proper meaning to be assigned to the word was that it suggested inaction by Lim’s government, which in itself was not defamatory of him.

Advancing FMT’s defence that the statements complained of amounted to mere reportage, Lopez also told the Court that all statements contained in the news report had been properly attributed to Professor Lim without the report leading its readers to conclude that any of those allegations were true.

Reacting to the decision, FMT CEO Shahrom Shahrudin described it as a victory for the mass media in Malaysia.

“FMT was merely reporting on heritage issues in Penang which had been ventilated by someone who is an authority on the subject,” he explained, adding that the public needed to be kept abreast on such issues which were matters of public interest.

“Ultimately, these matters contribute towards the way we define our Malaysian society,” he added.

Shahrom assured the public that FMT will continue to prioritise unbiased reporting on matters of public interest as and when they arise.