After more than a year now has a story for the daily mirror-Journalist and blogger Sebastian Leber came to a good end, which started badly – and which, among other things, tells a lot about how dubious and right-wing extremist media bend the truth when it suits them politically. In November 2021, Leber wanted to write a report about pushbacks on the Bosnian-Croatian border and was arrested by Croatian police officers on charges of having acted as a smuggler himself. He was held at a police station for hours and convicted the next day – not for people smuggling, the judge thought that was absurd, but for an administrative offense because he had crossed the green border without realizing it. This decision was later reversed and Leber was legally and fully acquitted.
That could have ended the matter if a right-wing Croatian media outlet hadn’t gratefully picked up the story, published a photo of the German journalist between two police officers and claimed that Leber had wanted to smuggle migrants illegally across the EU’s external border. Some German-language, right-wing extremist blogs took over this, including the photo, without checking it. The online medium published in Austria Express.at on November 21, 2021, under the headline “Employee of the left-wing daily mirror arrested as a smuggler”, in which the case of the former mirror-Reporter Claas Relotius – as if Leber would also invent stories. Of the daily mirror-Journalist, it was said Expressaccompanied by a “group of migrants” whom he “presumably wanted to bring illegally across the border in order to later write an article about their suffering”.
Online medium lost in court
Leber sued for slander and won justice in March 2022 before the Vienna Regional Court for Criminal Matters. Express was ordered to pay 10,000 euros in damages, but appealed. The proceedings before the Higher Regional Court went again at the end of December for and against the liver Express out, the online medium was also obliged to publish the verdict. Only the compensation was reduced.
On the phone, Leber reported his relief, but also how the author of the misleading Express-Article apparently had worked; also the default had already reported in March 2022 from the first instance about the actions of the “self-proclaimed non-mainstream medium”. Accordingly, editor-in-chief Richard Schmitt forwarded a Croatian tweet to his colleague about the cause that led to the said Croatian online medium; this was translated by the author, as he stated in court, using Google Translate. He refrained from fact-checking or calling the affected German colleague. After the article and the corresponding retweets, Leber said he received dozens of hate mails and was massively threatened.