Sued for defamation by the Russian state-owned television channel, RT France (formerly Russia Today), for discussing a “manipulation of information” and “falsifications”, researcher Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer was released on Friday, May 27, by the Paris court.
Director of the Strategic Research Institute of the Military School (Irsem), which belongs to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, Mr. Jeangène Vilmer was targeted for five messages published on the social network Twitter in September 2018. In one of the messages, it targeted the two Russian state media RT and Sputnik, banned from broadcasting in the European Union since March 2: “RT and Sputnik (…) frequently invent facts, falsify documents, translations or interviews”. The researcher cited as an example the “falsification” of the translation of a report on Syria, subject ofa formal notice from the CSA in June 2018.
If three of the five tweets have a character “defamatory”the Paris court noted that the ” disinformation “ constituted “a subject of general interest”that the researcher had not demonstrated“personal animosity”, and that he had a “sufficient factual basis for him to legitimately believe what he was writing”. The lawyers of the Irsem researcher had provided, in support, 70 examples where the channels of the RT group had, according to them, shown disinformation.
No “desire to deceive the viewer”, according to RT France
During the hearing held on March 17, Jean-Baptiste Jeangene Vilmer explained that the offending tweets were part of a ” thread “ written in response to “fire of criticism” Russian media and authorities after publication of the report “The manipulation of information. A challenge for our democracies”, of which he is the co-author. The researcher called his 2018 remarks “consensus” and denounced the“legal bullying” practiced, according to him, by this channel.
The lawyer for RT France, who had no representative at the hearing, had pleaded in March the“technical error” for the offending report and denied any “desire to deceive the viewer”. At the conclusion of the session, the prosecution had not asked for a conviction, considering that the offending remarks were not “not infringing on freedom of expression”, because they « register[aient] in the context of a debate of general interest”.
The court, on the other hand, refused the request for damages from the researcher, who considered that RT France’s complaint fell within the scope of a “abusive procedure”.