April 4, 2014
Amanda Knox fought to get compensation for "moral damages" after an Italian journalist published names of those she mentioned in her sex life during her pre-trial period in 2008 for the murder of student, Meredith Kercher. A judge in Milan ruled in favor of Knox's right to privacy on March 21. The Latino Post reports April 4 that the judge acknowledged that those accused of serious crimes don't have the same privacy as others.
Knox filed a civil lawsuit against an Italian media company, RCS Mediagroup, for excerpts they used from her personal diary.
Although the Amanda Knox civil suit was granted, but defendants appealed the ruling to the Court of Cassation. They referred it back to the Milan court, suggesting they reexamine the suit based on rules "governing privacy and journalism."
The judge found a violation in the Italian Data Protection Code was made in which personal information is "not essential to public interest," ruling in Knox's favor.
The Milan judge stated in her ruling that it wouldn't be acceptable to "... lower the bar for intrusion into the personal life of inviduals in proportion to the hype around the facts and that the relevance of the information would not be connected to the public relevance of the story, and instead ... linked to the volatile curiosity of readers and, more importantly, bent to economic interests, or interests of another nature, pursued by the media...".
It was also stated by the judge that just because journalists can access public court documents doesn't mean they can go and exploit certain details. They are required to "filter the documents to comply with the standards for the protection of fundamental rights in the privacy code."
The judge ruled that Amanda Knox suffered moral damages in this civil case and ordered defendants to compensate her for those damages.
Copyright © 2014 Heather Tooley
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