Rome Court Annuls 150,000 Euro Fine Imposed on Rai for Broadcasting Audio of Former Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano
The Rome court has annulled the 150,000 euro fine that the Privacy Guarantor had imposed on Rai for broadcasting an audio conversation between former minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and his wife Federica Corsini. The audio, which was aired on the program Report, featured Sangiuliano discussing a phantom contract with his wife and her request to cancel it. The decision was announced by Siegfried Ranucci on Facebook, who stated that the court deemed the broadcast to be “legitimate and in the public interest”.
According to the court, the Guarantor for the protection of personal data carried out the investigation outside the time limits established by law, and the magistrates underlined that the Guarantor made mistakes in both content and form. The court recognized the existence of a public interest in the dissemination of the news, as the matter, although personal in nature, took on substantial public relevance. The telephone conversations between the former minister and his wife pertained to the topic of the possibility that the assignment of high institutional positions may be influenced by personal matters rather than the public interest.
The Sentence
The contents of the contested report can be traced back to the legitimate exercise of reporting and journalistic criticism, in the peculiar form of investigative journalism, in compliance with the principle of the essentiality of information. The court stated that the integral and original display of the conversation is fully justified in the perspective of conveying the historical data in its immediacy, so as to avoid the risk of generating in the spectator the suspicion of artificial or biased reconstructions on the part of the journalist.
The court also scrutinized the “lateness of the sanctioning measure”, stating that the certainty of the time within which the administrative authority must conclude the procedure allows the interested parties to effectively exercise the right of defence. The peremptoriness of the deadlines within which the proceeding authority must conclude the various phases of the procedure represents an essential prerequisite for guaranteeing compliance with the fundamental principles of the legal system, covered by constitutional guarantee.
Guarantor’s Response
The Guarantor for the protection of personal data took note of the sentence and reserved the right to evaluate the challenge through an appeal to the Supreme Court. The Guarantor itself has set its own action times, establishing that decisions on complaints must take place within 9/12 months from receipt of the complaint, where the longer term of 12 months is granted by law only in the presence of motivated investigative needs previously communicated to the interested party.
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