THE filing of cyber libel charges against Rappler’s Maria Ressa and her subsequent arrest point to the urgency to adopt a policy to cover requests to delete material posted online.
Any online operation, especially news websites, must have received requests at some point or another to remove posts for reasons such as wrong information, the event happened long ago and the report was dated or the material violated copyright. Since there are no industry rules on how to respond to such requests, each entity would have to decide based on individual procedures and standards.
What happened to Ressa, chief executive officer and executive editor of news website Rappler, is a wake-up call to come up with a deletion policy or a policy to remove online posts because, really, if it can happen to Ressa then it can happen to anybody. That’s the chilling effect of this incident on media and other online content producers.
Ressa was arrested at the Rappler headquarters last Wednesday, Feb. 13. She posted bail the next day. She was charged with violating the Cybercrime Prevention Act over a “defamatory” article in 2012. Businessman Wilfredo Keng filed the complaint as he said Rappler maligned him when it said he had loaned his vehicle to former Chief Justice Renato Corona who was eventually impeached for graft. Keng said Rappler never attempted to get his side on the crimes wrongly imputed to him and refused to act on his requests to have the article taken down because it was not true.
A claim that the information was false is not enough ground to immediately delete an online post. There must be a policy and a process to address the request. Anyone could claim the article was false. What is important is that the process of deletion is clear to the website owner or administrator and the person making the request.
Appeals to remove posts usually cite the following reasons: information was false, it’s a blatant hoax, the event reported happened a long time ago and the suspect was eventually cleared of the crime, and copyright infringement.
The website may grant a request on face value or after an investigation.
It’s difficult to say if Rappler was wrong in not granting Keng’s request or was right to insist the news was valid at the time of publication. I became curious about how it weighed the request against its independent stance and attempts of government to silence it. I wish I was in the Rappler newsroom when they were discussing Keng’s request.
In some organizations, the policy regarding removing posts requires that the request be in writing, be assessed at the first level or by the editor who handled it then passed on for decision at the second level or with a top editor or editorial board. The company’s lawyer gets brought in when the case involves interpretation of the law or an impending legal action.
That procedure must now be reviewed and strengthened.
(ninicab@sunstar.com.ph)