The Kuala Lumpur High Court yesterday gave five reasons in accepting Malaysiakini's defence of reportage, when dismissing the defamation suit brought by National Feedlot Corporation Sdn Bhd and its chairperson Mohd Salleh Ismail.

The decision by Judicial Commissioner Azizul Azmi Adnan, also saw him ordering NFC and Salleh to pay RM50,000 cost to the news portal.

Reportage refers to a neutral reporting of the fact that statements have been made by and which are attributed to another person, and not the reporting of statements as a representation of the facts.

Salleh and NFC had sued Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli and Malaysiakini, over the PKR MP's statement on March 7, 2012, alleging public funds meant for National Feedlot Centre project in Gemas, were used as leverage to purchase eight properties at KL Eco World.

Rafizi was ordered by the court to pay a total of RM300,000 with RM200,000 in damages and RM100,00 costs to Salleh and NFC, respectively. In addition, the court granted an injunction barring Rafizi and the portal from repeating the statement.

The five reasons given by the court to accept the defence of reportage are:

1) the information sought or disclosed by Rafizi was in the public interests;

2) although the court was not satisfied the news portal had attempted to verify the accuracy of Rafizi's statements in the press release, the failure for not undertaking the verification is not fatal to the defence of reportage;

3) the effect of the reporting by Malaysiakini, when viewed as a whole and evaluated objectively was to report the statements made by Rafizi, rather than persuading the reader or viewer of the truth of its contents. The article to which the video clip was linked clearly attributed Rafizi's statements and reproducing them in quotation marks;

4) the reporting had been done in a fair, disinterested and neutral way. There is no suggestion that the video recording had been edited in a way as would render it misleading or unrepresentative of the actual events. In addition, the updating of the article at approximately 11pm the same day to include NFC's response supports the finding the reporting was done in a fair and neutral manner.

5) the urgency of the matter justified the publication of the reporting. While Rafizi had much time to peruse, analyse and reflect on the documents leaked to him, Malaysiakini is an alternative media relying on the immediacy of reporting. The decision by the news portal to publish the report and the accompanying video clip cannot be faulted.

Azizul also dismissed the notion of malice on the part of Malaysiakini, as it could not be established based on the case of Al-Fagih v HH Saudi Research and Marketing (UK) Ltd.

“Having considered the evidence as a whole, I find that the second defendant (Malaysiakini) is accorded the defence of reportage. For these reasons, the plaintiffs' claims against the second defendant is dismissed,” he said.