The adjudication of the Press Council of Kosovo on the appeal of the Customs Service of Kosovo filed against the newspaper “Infopress”
30 June 2008The Press Council of Kosovo, in Prishtina, in its session held on 30 June 2008, after reviewing the appeal of the Directorate of the Customs Service of Kosovo in Prishtina, filed against the newspaper “Infopress” due to the article “In the pubs of Athens with the money of people” published on April 4, 2008, took this:
D E C I S I O N
- The appeal is upheld
The newspaper “Infopress”, in its article titled “In the pubs of Athens with the money of people” violated the provisions of the Press Code of Kosovo
– Chapter II.
R e a s o n i n g
The Directorate of the Customs Service of Kosovo in Prishtina filed an appeal against the newspaper “Infopress” due to the article “In the pubs of Athens with the money of people” published on April 4, 2008 because the published article did not respect the factual truth and thereby it violated the provisions of the Code, Chapter II, item 1.
The Press Council analyzed the article from every point of view and then found that there is a violation of the provision of the Code, Chapter II, Item 1, because the newspaper “Infopress”, by its article mentioned above, does not refer to the source and accurate information in the case of the accusation “In the pubs of Athens with the money of people” and this accusation was generalized with the assertion: “Close sources inform that the students in some universities like the one in Thessaloniki and somewhere else do not attend the lectures but most of the time wander in the cafés of the cities. Therefore, Huruglica, (the director) resembles more to Lord Byron or a modern adventurer seeking the grace of ancient Greece.”
Therefore, in the absence of the accurate and concrete information, because it is insufficient prove the real fact by saying “it is learned” and “from close sources, the Press Council of Kosovo received from the Directorate of the Customs in Kosovo the document that this directorate had asked from City College, affiliated Institution of the University of Sheffield in Thessaloniki, the certificate issued on 21 May 2008 which proves that “the director Naim Huruglica regularly attended the lectures in this faculty”.
This fact, in itself, confutes the article of the newspaper “Infopress” as mentioned above.
On the other side, the newspaper “Infopress” in a part of its article contradicts its own idea and when asserting that “in the pubs of Athens with the money of people” in the same time it writes “according to the press office of the Customs of Kosovo, the number of scholarships distributed by the Customs Service in Kosovo is 51. These scholarships are part of the program to build the human capacity and the beneficiaries of these scholarships are obliged that after finishing the studies, they have to contribute to the customs service for at least two years.” In case of failing in the studies, they shall return the whole financed sum.
The information regarding the obligation of the students, renders meaningless the rectifying idea of “in the pubs of Athens with the money of people” also when taking into consideration that the studies are not finished yet. It is not known “whether the money of the taxpayers will be wasted”.
The Press Council of Kosovo found that this article is a mistaken opinion, more over when the directorate of the Customs responded correctly to the question of the newspaper “Infopress” for many issues and because these studies are in the interest of the society. There is also a wrong conclusion when claiming that the “customs service is the most corrupted institution of the country”, because such a conclusion would be wrong if it does not rely on a concrete information from the viewpoint of the Press Code of Ethics.
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