The Dominican Society of Newspapers (SDD) reminds people that the Constitutional Court has already decided that digital media do not have to unpublish truthful news stories at the request of affected or damaged persons. The SDD reminds citizens that the Constitutional Court (TC) has ruled that online media can refuse to delete news as requested by those that understand they are affected by the story. The media campaign is in response to frequent requests from persons and their lawyers to remove content where they are mentioned from online news sources.
The 2020 Constitutional Court ruling was in answer to a claimant who demanded that digital media Acento erase news content. The TC concluded that the information published by Acento was not erroneous or fake, and rejected the petitioner’s request.
The Dominican Society of Newspapers (SDD) values the ruling as a great contribution to citizens’ right to information. The ruling establishes the right of digital newspapers to keep on their platforms the information related to legitimate “newsworthy facts” that are from truthful or valid sources.
The TC 0171-20 ruling of 17 June 2020 accepted the means of inadmissibility proposed by the defendant, and consequently, declared inadmissible and improper, the constitutional action presented by José Walnobi Núñez Martínez against the Editorial Acento S.A.S, considering that the data and information published were neither erroneous nor false. Núñez Martínez had presented the case to the Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance of the National District that had ruled in favor of Acento in February 2019. The claimant sought the deleting of a sentence in an article where it stated that he had ties with drug trafficking. The affected person said he was not prosecuted for this reason.
At time, the Constitutional Court ruled that the information published by Acento was neither erroneous nor false, and therefore rejected the plaintiff’s request. The court established that Acento disseminated the news acting in the legitimate exercise of its fundamental right to freedom of information.
The SDD defends the respect of people to privacy, the right of people to have access to their data, and the media’s responsibility to correct them when they are erroneous or false, but also the right of the population to be informed.
SDD states in a press release: “In this sense, it values as a great contribution to the right to information of the citizens the abovementioned sentence, which was officially communicated to Editorial Acento on 2 March 2021,” concludes a document of the entity that gathers the country’s main newspapers.
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Listin Diario
Hoy
Diario Libre
Constitutional Court
21 April 2022