The Government continues to advance in the Action Plan for Democracy and approved yesterday in the Council of Ministers the Preliminary Draft Organic Law Regulating the Right of Rectification. This seeks to update the current law and adapt the aforementioned right to the reality of communication and new technologies, and allow the public correction of fake news and hoaxes.

With this movement, the Government expands the scope of the right to rectification, in such a way that it will not only apply to the media, but also to social media, including digital media, and to particularly relevant users of online platforms. that is to say, to influencers and content creators.

The executive points out that, for the purposes of this draft law, those users who have more than 100,000 followers on a single platform, or 200,000 cumulatively on several.

Furthermore, as approved by the Council of Ministers, the media and platforms that host these particularly relevant users must establish accessible mechanisms to facilitate said right to rectification to applicants, whether or not they are users of the platform in question. Likewise, they must notify when a news item is rectified and link it to the original.

“These are those users who disseminate information and other content through these platforms and who, due to the number of followers they have, enjoy a reach and impact comparable to that of traditional media, configuring themselves as authentic creators of communication and public opinion; and that, therefore, they must be subject to the possibility of their contents being rectified“, noted Félix Bolaños, Minister of the Presidency, when presenting the project, according to The Country.

On the other hand, the draft modifies the right of rectification itself, which dates back to 1984, and eliminates the requirement to contact the media director to request rectification of information. However, he maintains that The dissemination of the rectification must be free, complete and carried out with similar relevance to that of the original publication.

The Council of Ministers’ proposal also includes modifications regarding the persons entitled to request rectification. As explained by Moncloa, the rights of people with disabilities are reinforced and the subjects whose family members have died and are affected by information are expanded. Also extends the deadline to request rectificationgoing from seven to ten days.

The measures presented are framed in the Action Plan for Democracy, whose objective is to promote, as the Executive points out, a higher quality of public debate, reinforce the right to freedom of expression and guarantee the right to truthful information.

What was approved updates the law on the right to rectification, in force for 40 years and which only applied to traditional media. The Government has considered that it was obsolete in the face of the social and cultural changes that have occurred, and the transformation of the way of consuming and distributing information.