Journalist Francisco Chavanel has just added his third conviction for another attack on honor with his "false" and "injurious" information about the Unión case. This is supported by a new ruling, which this time sides with the businessman and former president of the PIL, Antonio Hernández, whom Chavanel referred to as a "protected witness" of the investigators, also trying to establish false links between them.
Both in his radio program and in opinion articles that he published in the newspaper Canarias 7 in 2014, the journalist even spoke of economic favors from the businessman to the prosecutor who initiated the case, such as the loan of a car or a free rental of a house, which has been proven not to have existed.
"Based on such unverified information, the falsity of which has been proven in light of the proven facts, Mr. Chavanel offers the public a somewhat novelized view of the facts," states the ruling issued by the Court of First Instance Number 1 of Arrecife and dated January 31, which condemns the journalist and the producer of his radio program, Escorpión de Jade S.L., to pay Antonio Hernández compensation of 20,000 euros for the "moral damage".
Two other convictions for his attacks on Stampa and Pamparacuatro
With that "novelized vision" described in the ruling, Francisco Chavanel has spent years suggesting that the entire Unión case was a kind of murky "conspiracy" of certain judges, prosecutors, politicians, UCO agents, and even high-ranking state officials.
In that campaign to discredit the largest case against corruption carried out in Lanzarote –which already has five rulings and all are condemnatory, four of them final- Chavanel directed his greatest attacks against the first investigating judge, César Romero Pamparacuatro, and against the prosecutor with whom the case began, Ignacio Stampa. Both had also filed lawsuits against the journalist and in both cases he was convicted, as it was considered proven that he attacked their honor by disseminating false information.
Now, Antonio Hernández's lawsuit has led to a third conviction. And it is that in his attacks on the investigators, Chavanel also included the one who was for a time president of the PIL, trying to link him to them with false data and thus suggesting that he could have received preferential treatment. According to the ruling, this constituted "an unjustified attack on the right to honor" of Antonio Hernández.
"He intended to convey the idea that they were objective data"
In his defense, Chavanel argued that both his statements on the radio and the articles he published in Canarias 7 were only opinions, thus trying to evade his responsibility. However, the ruling concludes that he should be required to be truthful in what he disseminated, since by using "various radio and literary resources", what he intended was "to transmit to the audience an appearance of verisimilitude, since the facts that are affirmed are presented as the result of journalistic investigations and inquiries".
Therefore, given that the journalist conveyed "the idea that what he says are objective data", it concludes that they should have been verified. In addition, the ruling adds that from that false information, the journalist "then strung together different ideas, throwing questions and conjectures into the air" that "come to sow in the audience unjustified doubts about the honorability of the behavior of Mr. Antonio Hernández".
As for what the ruling does consider opinions, it also concludes that the journalist "greatly exceeded the limit of what is admissible", since he used expressions "completely gratuitous and far from the opinion that was intended to be exposed, being formally and materially injurious" and coming to impute to the plaintiff "the performance of unethical and even criminal conduct".
Exempts Canarias 7 from responsibility
The lawsuit was also directed against the publishing company of Canarias 7, where Chavanel published articles for two years "free of charge", but in this case it has not been convicted. The ruling considers that what this newspaper published were opinion articles, since in them "suppositions and value judgments predominate", so it maintains that its "veracity must be answered only by the author of the article", and it is not possible to demand responsibility from the newspaper for not having properly supervised its content.
Thus, although it points out that these articles serve "to reinforce the journalist's own subjective responsibility" and "are indicative of the causation of greater moral damage" to the plaintiff, it exempts Canarias 7 from responsibility, condemning only Chavanel himself and his radio production company. It should be remembered that the publishing company of Canarias 7 was convicted in the ruling for the lawsuit filed by Judge César Romero Pamparacuatro, both for the articles that Chavanel published against the magistrate in that newspaper and for another signed by the journalist Carlos Inza. In addition, that ruling also condemned Lancelot.
In this last trial, the journalist was defended by the controversial lawyer Juan David García Pazos, who has been linked to two associations that have also been accused of trying to hinder the Unión case and other cases against corruption opened in Lanzarote: the Asociación de Juristas Jiménez de Asúa and the alleged environmental association Jacón. For his part, the lawyer Francisco Torres represented the plaintiff, Antonio Hernández, to whom the Court has sided with. Now, in addition to paying him compensation, Chavanel must read the heading and the ruling of the sentence for three consecutive days on his program.
