Actor and Occupy Justice activist Pia Zammit has been awarded damages after an appeals court found that It-Torċa had damaged her reputation by linking her to Nazism in a front-page photo that was taken out of context. 

The ruling overturns a judgment by a first court, which had concluded that Zammit had to take the criticism on the chin as she had made the photo publicly accessible on her Facebook page. Zammit had lodged an appeal against that ruling. 

The photo in question depicted Zammit in Nazi costume. It had been taken backstage during rehearsals for the theatrical production of the wartime comedy Allo Allo, a popular BBC sitcom of the 1970s staged at the Manoel Theatre back in 2009. 

Zammit played Michelle Dubois in that play – a character who is part of the French Resistance involved in trapping Nazis and saving the French people. 

Eleven years later, the Maltese newspaper had taken that picture out of its original context, repositioning it in a totally different context so as to lend it a completely different meaning, observed Mr Justice Lawrence Mintoff when delivering judgment on Wednesday. 

The appeals court disagreed with the conclusion of the first court that the article in it-Torċa concerned a matter of controversy, irony and sensitivity without attributing any particular facts to the actress that could seriously harm her reputation. 

In taking the photo out of the original context it had been taken in years previously, the appeals court ruled, it-Torċa editor Victor Vella gave rise to a “re-presentation of the narrative.” 

The editor had clearly sought to convey a particular message with the photo, the judge said: that Zammit was actively involved in civil society while also trivialising Nazism and the suffering it had caused. 

“A picture speaks a thousand words,” the judge said. 

And that was meant to say that Zammit was insensitive to the atrocities faced by Nazi victims and that also made her a hypocrite, observed the court, noting further that in its original context the picture was linked to a play which actually ridiculed Nazism. 

Therefore the newspaper, which featured the picture four times in two successive front-page stories, had not only risked seriously harming Zammit’s reputation but did in fact do so, given the reactions sparked by the newspaper story. 

In light of such considerations the court revoked the judgment, upheld Zammit’s appeal and awarded her €1200 by way of compensation for moral damages, whilst ordering Vella to bear all legal costs.