More than a ruling, it was a blow against freedom of expression. A citizen appeared on October 9, 2000, before the Supreme Court to request that the late President Hugo Chávez be required to grant him a right of reply, and the answer he got the June 12, 2001, would end defining the exercise of freedom of expression in Venezuela.
The general coordinator of the civil association Queremos Elegir, Elías Santana, requested the intervention of the Supreme Court after Chavez and the director of Radio Nacional de Venezuela, Teresa Maniglia, denied him a chance to respond to the attacks he had suffered on August 27, 2000, during the broadcast of the radio programme “Aló Presidente,” by the Head of State.
The Constitutional Court, on presentation by Justice Jesús Eduardo Cabrera, not only rejected the request of the civil society representative, but also took the opportunity to degrade all Venezuelan journalists. According to Cabrera’s reasoning, as Santana was a journalist who had a column in a national newspaper and a radio programme station, “he has no right to reply or rectification, as whatever he deems necessary to reply to the President he can do so in his column in the newspaper (…) or on the radio programme.”
Later, the Supreme Court stated that “the right to reply and correction are not held by neither the media, nor those who normally practice journalism, nor those who have columns or programmes in them, nor those who through messages elicit a reaction against them. It is a right granted to those affected by information in the media, and who lack public channels to reply or give their version of the story.”
From that moment, journalists of the country lost the possibility of exercising the right of reply, set forth in Article 58 of the Constitution. Under this premise, the President has a license to insult any journalist through all media at his disposal, and that person cannot reply in equal terms.
But the Constitutional Court did not stop there. “It is an attack on the true and impartial information to have a majority of columnists of one ideological tendency, unless the media outlet in its editorials or through its spokespersons, maintains and identifies itself with an editorial line consistent with the opinion columnists and collaborators,” ruled the judges, interfering in the editorial line of the media.
In the same judgment, the Supreme Court justified laws on contempt, vilification and slander. “Freedom of expression, though not subject to prior censorship, must respect the rights of others, therefore, its exercise entails ultimate responsibilities for those who exercise it, in many cases shared with the media, especially when the latter engages in communicational terrorism aimed at subjecting persons or institutions to public rejection,” said the Court.
The judges closed the circle by making a difference between freedom of expression and freedom of information, denying the right of reply to anyone who feels wronged by opinions. “These rights of reply and correction, can only be used by the person who was directly affected by the information (…) the right of reply or correction is not a right to refute opinions or to engage in public diatribe.”
After creating the gap between freedom of expression and freedom of information as an alibi, the Constitutional Court concluded that “the facts attributed to the President of the Republic to request the right to reply are not inaccurate or offensive information against the petitioners, but merely opinions.”
This is what Supreme Court ruled in 2001. The rest is history.
Extract of the judgment
The Court believes that if Elías Santana or the civil association Queremos Elegir believe they have been aggrieved by the President of the Republic, they can take the actions they deem appropriate, but being a journalist with a regular column in the newspaper El Nacional, and a daily radio programme (…) the person requesting the right to reply in his own behalf and on behalf of the legal entity of which he is spokesperson lacks any right of reply or correction, because, whatever he deems necessary to reply to the President he can do so in his column in the newspaper, which is a nationwide newspaper, on the radio programme, without having to make a separation between himself and the civil association (…)” for which he acts, because he is the spokesperson (…) In cases like these, where the difference between a columnist or a journalist and the entity is not clear, which also consistently makes statements in the newspapers through the journalist/columnist, a situation known by the Court because it is a known communicational fact, there can hardly be a dichotomy granting a right of reply or special correction for the entity”.