Free press not the issue: Lu

Vice President Annette Lu's (呂秀蓮) legal team contended in court yesterday that the suit against The Journalist (新新聞周報) is not an issue of freedom of the press, but a question of malice.

Following a continuance of over two months, the Taipei District Court held the second hearing on the high-profile suit by the vice president against the political weekly for its publication of a story last November accusing Lu of spreading rumors against President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).

Neither Lu nor the eight individuals accused from The Journalist attended the hearing yesterday.

Lu denies spreading the rumor and is demanding that The Journalist restore her reputation by offering a formal public apology.

The vice president did not file a criminal suit against nor request monetary compensation from the magazine.

During the more than three-hour hearing, the six-member team representing Lu asserted that it was not a battle between individual rights and freedom of press, as The Journalist claims.

They contended that in failing to attribute sources to the report -- other than to the magazine's editor in chief -- The Journalist failed to behave as a responsible member of the media, they said.

"It's rare and unconvincing that the magazine has claimed their own man to be the sole source of the challenged report. From our point of view, the bare reality is that the plaintiff made up the whole thing with the malicious intention to defame the vice president," said Charles Chiu (邱雅文), a member of Lu's legal team.

The Journalist has claimed that the challenged report was initiated after the vice president told Yang Chao (楊照), the magazine's editor in chief, of the rumor during a phone call on Oct. 3 last year. Reporters then carried out an investigation to verify Lu's "rumor-spreading acts."

Defense lawyers contend that reporters from The Journalist spoke to many other sources and these sources verified that the vice president had been spreading rumors that Chen was having an affair with his translator, in an attempt to unseat him.

However, until yesterday, the magazine had refused to present any evidence relating to the verification process, asserting that confidentiality is necessary to protect their sources.

"None of them want to be named for fear of getting into trouble," said Lo Min-ton (羅明通), attorney for The Journalist.

From the beginning of the dispute, lawyers for the vice president have challenged the veracity of The Journalist's claims about the phone call between Lu and Yang.

Lu's attorneys have repeatedly pointed out that Yang's phone records on the day in question fail to contain a phone call from the vice president.

While yesterday the magazine continued to insist that Yang's phone records might have been tampered with, Lu's lawyers call that simply impossible.

The Journalist argued that the lack of phone records is only one of many issues in this case and that the salient question is whether or not the vice president spread the rumor.

"Even without the phone call, it [the prosecution] cannot say the vice president did not spread the rumor," a defense lawyer claimed.

Although there have been two pre-trial conferences held, the court has yet to sort out a number of important legal issues in the case, including upon which party the burden of proof should rest. The next hearing is scheduled for April 9.