Fact-checking
: Harry Hatchet says he is fact-checking my ass on my Europhobia below (relating to a “right of reply” that will be granted against online media).
Harry says the report to which we’re all reacting is false.
But I’m not so sure.
The issue is that the regulation deleted the word “professional” before “on-line media.” Here’s the text:
the term “professional on-line media” means any natural or legal person or other entity whose [main] professional activity is to engage in the collection, dissemination, editing and/or dissemination of information to the public on a regular basis via the Internet, such as on-line news portals or bulletins…
The real question is whether a court could then fit a weblog under that definition. Still seems to me, it could.
Harry also points out that this European bureaucracy is not part of the bigger EU bureaucracy. I stand corrected. But how many bureaucracies do Europeans need?
And Harry wonders what the problem is with publications running corrections and replies? No problem; any self-respecting journalist — or, yes, weblogger; hell any civilized person — should do that. That’s not the problem. The problem is that once government decrees what you can and should and should not say and how and where you say it, you lose freedom of speech.
Here’s the proposed regulation.
And here’s Harry’s post. Note that I give him the right to reply without being stormed by EuroInfoPolice.
And see my comments; more good fact-checking there.
We link, you decide.
