Legislative Demand for Media Accuracy
In order for a democracy to function properly, its citizens must be informed of the events in their country and abroad with the highest degree of accuracy. It is therefore the obligation of all media outlets, regardless of the form of that media, to conduct themselves to the highest degree of accuracy in all proceedings. Therefore:
1) Any agency identifying and conducting itself as a news organization, with the appropriate license to do so, must issue a correction for any verifiably false statement made within its media.
2) Corrections are mandatory, regardless of who made the error, even if the statement came from a non-employee of the media organization, and regardless of whether the error was intentional or not.
3) The corrective statement must be issued in the same form, ie the same television program, or news page, in which the error occurred.
4) The corrective statement must reach an identical viewership or readership threshold; ie if the statement was in television, the corrective statement must reach the same number of households as received the false statement, verified by third-party ratings agencies such as Nielsen or others; if the statement is in print, the corrective statement must reach the same number of readers. The news agency must issue multiple corrective statements, in the same form (television for television, print for print), at the same time of day, until this threshold is reached, to ensure the requirement is not skirted by issuing false statements when viewership is high, then corrective statements when viewership is low.
