Ranting to /dev/null

On "Right of Reply"in Europe

Slashdot is carrying a story about how the Council of Europe is in all liklihood about to pass legislation that would require online media outliets to provide the "right of reply" to anyone who feels somehow slighted by said online media outlet. The resolution can be found here.

I'm not entirely sure what to think about this. On one hand, I agree with a few of the provisions in the CoE resolution, namely the idea that it is beneficial to hear news from alternate sources and that online sources can be incredibly damaging to individuals' reputations (remember what the bloggers did to Raines and Blair?).

Yet I am also inclined to agree with the analysis Declan McCullagh of News.com (article here). It would seem that the appropriate "checks and balances" upon media are already in place, as anyone and everyone can publish online, so if you don't like what someone is saying about you, it makes sense to simply write your own side of the story. Forcing your critic to run your own view of things seems a bit draconian. And McCullagh sounds accurate when he suggests that forcing "right of reply" tends to discourage controversial speech of all kinds.

Two things stand out to me here. First, McCullagh is right in his assertion that people aren't stupid and can detect media bias pretty fairly. If something sounds fishy, people can and do look elsewere for their media inputs. But what he doesn't point out is that most people like a little bias in their media. I sure has hell do. That's why I read The Weekly Standard and FoxNews more often than The Nation or Salon. I am not likely to be convinced by either of the latter sources of input, as I consider both of them to be only slightly left of Stalin and thus not worth a flaming bag of poo (though Salon does have good movie reviews). With media diversity being what it is, most people read the sources they want to hear from and ignore the rest. Thus, exercising "right of reply" might only damage the "wronged" party further, as readers of said website know that the person in question, whom they probably are indisposed to like anyway, is forcing the media outlet of their choice to run something it doesn't want to run.

Second, this really doesn't sound like freedom of the press to me. Granted, that particular legal right is only enshrined clearly in the US, but I still think it's a good thing. To me, "freedom of the press" says that anyone can say anything they want, but it doesn't say that you can make me print something you want me to print. Go do it yourself, if it's that important to you. And yes, I am aware of the charge that unless the reply is carried by the offending source it is unlikely to reach the intended audience. Tough. If that's the cost of not allowing the bureaucrats to control the press, then I'm more than willing to pay it. Otherwise, the media would be so full of retractions that there wouldn't be any space left for new stories.

To me, this just seems like an extension of the common European assumption that bureaucracy is the solution for every problem. Great guys. It's worked wonders in the past, maybe it'll work this time.

Posted by ryan at June 16, 2003 11:15 AM | TrackBack