The Criminal Court of Pescara, Italy, has held that reporter Mauro D’Agostino did not breach the law by publishing payslips of executives at the top of a luxury menswear company.
The context: top executives received large bonuses whilst hundreds of employees were fired
D’Agostino worked for the online newspaper corrierequotidiano.it. In 2017, he wrote a series of articles as part of an investigation into Brioni. Brioni is a world-renowned luxury menswear company based in Abruzzo, Italy.
At the time, in June 2017, the company producing Brioni’s clothing was experiencing financial difficulties, and fired hundreds of employees. When D’Agostino gained access to the executives’ payslips, he published them as part of his investigation. Personal details of the individuals involved were redacted, but the payslips exposed to the public that executives were receiving large bonuses, despite a significant drop in the company’s turnover.
The lawsuit: reporter exposing payslips charged with violation of privacy
Shortly after the publication of the payslips, Brioni accused D’Agostino of violation of privacy and disclosure of secret information. The company argued that the newspaper should remove D’Agostino’s article, as it would allegedly damage its reputation. The police also notified the journalist that it would open an investigation against him for defamation.
Our partner organisation Ossigeno per L’Informazione acted as legal counsel for D’Agostino. Ossigeno argued that the publishing of payslips in this case should have greater protection than Brioni’s privacy rights, as the information contained in the payslips was of public interest.
The judgment: reporter acquitted
The Criminal Court of Pescara acquitted D’Agostino of all charges. The judgment comes at the end of a long and stressful trial. The Court reasoned that the journalist could not be found guilty of breach of privacy, as this offence has been decriminalised in Italy since the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The Court also accepted the defence argument that publishing the payslips was of public interest. Moreover, the Court acquitted D’Agostino from breaching Brioni’s privacy rights because the payslips could not be considered secret documents.
D’Agostino commented on the judgment as follows:
“We are proud and incredibly happy that our path has crossed with an organization in defence of journalists such as Ossigeno per l’Informazione, with the extraordinary legal defence carried out by lawyer Andrea Di Pietro. We want them to be known and credited, first of all, for having restored dignity to individuals […]. But we also want to demonstrate it openly for all those colleagues from small newspapers or who work alone and find themselves in the same uncomfortable situation. Together it is possible to fight for a media capable of reporting the truth. Together we can hope for a free, independent and non-submissive journalism”.
To read Ossigeno per L’informazione’s report on the case, click here.
Click here if you are a journalist in need of legal support.
Recent News
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union and its coordinated fight against the use of Pegasus spyware
Welcome to the latest instalment of our Partners blog series. In this series, we interview our partners from around the world about their critical work in protecting freedom of expression. This time we spoke to Dalma Dojcsák, Executive Director of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU), about spyware. HCLU is one of Media Defence’s partner organisations. Founded […]
Learning Report 2022
Read our Learning Report 2022 Media Defence values the importance of learning and improvement. We undertake a variety of internal and external evaluations each year in order to understand the effectiveness and relevance of our programmes, ensuring that we learn from the experiences of the lawyers and journalists involved. We also do this to explore […]
Online threats, intimidation and judicial harassment against environmental journalist Alberto Castaño
Alberto Castaño is an environmental journalist supported by our partner Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa (FLIP). FLIP is a non-governmental organisation that promotes press freedom in Colombia. It also oversees the rights of citizens to be informed. Since 1996, FLIP has assisted more than 2000 Colombian journalists at risk. As an environmental journalist working […]