Right of reply

The right of reply generally means the right to defend oneself against public criticism in the same venue where it was published. In some countries, such as Brazil, it is a legal or even constitutional right. In other countries, it is not a legal right as such, but a right which certain media outlets and publications choose to grant to people who have been severely criticised by them, as a matter of editorial policy.

The Brazilian Constitution guarantees the right of reply (direito de resposta).

In Europe, there have been proposals for a legally enforceable right of reply that applies to all media, including newspapers, magazines, and other print media, along with radio, television, and the internet. In 1974, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe already voted a resolution granting a right of reply to all individuals. Article 1 of a 2004 Council of Europe recommendation defined a right of reply as: offering a possibility to react to any information in the media presenting inaccurate facts … which affect … personal rights.

In the federal system of Germany, the individual federal states are responsible for education, cultural affairs, and also the press and electronic media. All press laws of the 16 federal states guarantee the right to a counter presentation of factual statements which are deemed to be wrong by the individuals and organisations concerned. This is based on article 11 the national press law of 1874, and is found in all 16 laws as §11 or §10 in slightly modified versions.

Austria and Switzerland have similar laws on the book. In Austria this is in article 9 of the national media law, in Switzerland in article 28g of the civil code.

In France, the right to a corrective reply goes back to the and is renewed and extended to broadcast and digital media via various laws and decrees.

The Belgian law on the right to reply emerged in 1831 as article 13 of the 1831 decree on the press. This was replaced 130 years later by the law on the droit de réponse or «loi du 23 juin 1961». Originally referring only to the printed press, this law was amended in 1977 by the law of «4 mars 1977 relative au droit de réponse dans l’audiovisuel» i.e. audiovisual media, published in the Moniteur Belge of March 15, 1977. Since the federalisation of the Belgian state in 1980, the language communities are responsible for the media, and so the Flemish community has passed in 2005 a decrée dated March 4, 2005, which regulates the right to reply in articles 177 to 199, and the German language community has passed the decree of 27 June 2005, which simply refers to the law of 1961 as amended in 1977.

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Wikipedia