El derecho de rectificación

Abstract

The inevitable production of errors in the information business violates the citizen's right to obtain truthful information which permits him to form criteria with regard to daily problems in order to be able to choose correctly among the possible options presented. This is in effect the essence of democratic action. The sociological concepts of some countries such as the United States make it such that the graveness of the harm that may be wrought by erroneous information may be considered less serious than the danger in which freedon of the press places itself by permitting the invasion of the information media by individual and official organisms through the granting of the right of rectification of erroneous information. Other systems on the other hand consider that the juridical framework must anticipate the urgent re-establishment of the truth, giving rise to the birth of what has be en called the «rectificative control" of information by means of the figures of law of the right of reply attributed to individuals, and the right of rectification which can be exercised by public authorities and official organisms. It would appear to be interesting to study this figure -admitted in our legal and juridical system- and to which there is assigned as juridical nature that of «a public duty of service» defined by LUCIFREDI. As well as examining at length the historical antecedents and compared legislation with regard to the subject matter, the author sets down the foundation of the concept and the characteristics of the right of rectification. He also studies those aspects which relate to the active subject -authorities and the organs of the Administration- and to the passive subject -directors of periodic publications and of Information Agencies- as well as to the circumstances produced by the birth of the right and the conditions under which this right has to be exercised, and a number of other related aspects . These include the function assigned by our legislation to the official press organisms -which is not that of a simple intermediary but rather that of the qualification of the rectifying information and the power of decision over the propriety of ordaining the insertion of the rectifications- and the duties imposed by the norms in force upon the passive subject and the possibility of responsability in the case of nonfulfilment, in its administrative, penal and civil facets. The author then ends by examining the right of rectification as applied on the international level, both from the standpoint of its possib!e exercise on the part of authorities and organisms of one country in another country, and of its exercise at the State level.