Right to reply for Europe Online Criticised and unclear
The committee on human rights and the media of the Council of Europe (www.COE.int) in Strasbourg, France has taken its general 'right to reply', one step further.
The right, if adopted, would have the same status as the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, that is executed by the Council.
In extreme cases, this would give a lead to a case before the European Court for Human Rights.
The right is new for many European countries and some editorial experts also feel out of their depths predicting the effects of this proposal.
The right is meant to offer some basic redress to persons or organisations that have been criticised in the media, including 'new media', i.e. websites, e-zines and even blogs or chat rooms. The new ease of online publication is deemed to be one of the driving motives behind the council's proposal. In this second draft of the resolution published on June 30th, anyone or any organisation would have the right to correct by themselves any information published about them, if they can clearly state contradicting information.
Plaintiffs could simply send en e-mail to the offending publication, and claim their right to redress.
This right however would only apply to professional publications in the 43 member countries of the COE, but not to individuals' websites.
However, the draft does not draw a clear line between the two. Generally, in Europe there is no official register of professional publications.
Experts understand that the common guideline would be whether a publication is for profit. But even blogs run by professional journalists would not be exempt, according to comments by the spokesman for the council, Pall Thorhallsson, because as the draft states it would concern 'regularly updated and edited' publications. September 15th is the next deadline for comment on the proposal. Comments can be sent to the Council's media division. media@coe.int.
Some time after that, the draft will be put on the agenda of the comittee of ministers of the COE, of which Great Britain, all other Western and Eastern European states and Russia are members.
The comittee takes the final decision, but no date has yet been fixed for this and observers believe it may well take another year before this draft becomes law. Belgium and Germany already have had this right to response for some years, without much apparent trouble for editors or publishers. But in some American media, such as Cnet.comalready earlier versions of the draft, that were the same in essence, have been criticised - albeit without the righnt of reply.
The draft suggests a rather constrained procedure: the complaint: must be short and factual, and should be sent reasonably soon after the original contested publication took place. When contested material is also saved in archives, links to these must also be published.
If a complaint qualifies however, the correction should be published in the same way as the contested information. In some cases, regarding privacy of individuals, crimes or state secrets, publication can be refused. The draft proposes national governments to arrange for safekeeping of contested material when a complaint is launched. And apart from an eventual publication of a rectification, plaintiffs should keep their full rights to normal, already existing juridical procedures.
The Council of Europe also manages the European Court for Human Rights. The COE is often mistaken for the European Union, the organisation for economic cooperation consisting of 15, mostly Western European states and known for the euro.
(c) Arthur Graaff, agraaff@hotmail.com
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