IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ebg/heccah/1273.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is the EU Disinformation Review Compliant with EU Law? Complaint to the European Ombudsman About the EU Anti-Fake News Initiative

Author

Listed:
  • Alemanno, Alberto
  • Brogi, Justine
  • Fischer-Zernin, Maxime
  • Morrow, Paige

Abstract

The EU’s approach to fake news, as epitomised by the European External Action (EEAS) Service East Stratcom Disinformation Review, violates the rights to freedom of expression and due process of those accused of distributing disinformation. The EU Disinformation Review is a publication of the European External Action Service (the European Union’s diplomatic service) to target fake news and online disinformation. Following our request for access to documents, EEAS conceded that the EU Disinformation Review uses an “ad hoc” methodology for conducting its fact-checks, which makes it an outlier in the international fact-checking community led by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Despite being a well-intentioned initiative to respond to the challenges posed by pro-Kremlin disinformation, the EU should ensure the respect of fundamental rights when engaging in fact-checking. The EU Disinformation Review seeks to control the right to freedom of expression by labelling publishers as “disinforming outlets” and their content as “disinformation,” creating a chilling effect on the work of journalists that is central to democracy. The right to freedom of expression is expressed in Article 11.1 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000/C 364/01) and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The labelling of publishers as “disinformation outlets” is contrary to principle of the freedom of press established by the European Court of Human Rights: “[a] general requirement for journalists systematically and formally to distance themselves from the content of a quotation that might insult or provoke others or damage their reputation is not reconcilable with the press’ role of providing information on current events, opinion and ideas.” In addition, the methodology used by EEAS in the EU Disinformation Review is “ad hoc,” which constitutes a violation of the fundamental right to good administration in Article 41 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. Specifically, the ad hoc design and operation of the EU Disinformation Review fails to ensure the review acts “impartially, fairly and within a reasonable time.” First, publications are not provided with the right to be heard or proper notice. The EU Disinformation Review’s homepage offers an opportunity to contact the Task Force report a suspected mistake in a fact-check but the page is only available in English, in violation of the principle of multilingualism, and no notice if given to outlets accused of being “disinforming outlets” before or after fact-checks of their content are published. Second, the EEAS does not fulfil its duty to motivate. EEAS is given a broad margin of discretion to identify disinformation, but fails to do so according to a consistent methodology. Therefore, EEAS cannot justify, on the basis of objective criteria, its choice of which content to review and how to determine its truth or falsehood. To comply with EU law and ensure the respect of fundamental rights, the EEAS should develop and make public (1) a methodology for selecting partnerships and reviewing fact-checks in line with international standards and (2) a notice and response mechanism for journalists, publishers and citizens whose content is being reviewed. If EEAS is unable to comply with the above, the EU Disinformation Review should be shut down.

Suggested Citation

  • Alemanno, Alberto & Brogi, Justine & Fischer-Zernin, Maxime & Morrow, Paige, 2018. "Is the EU Disinformation Review Compliant with EU Law? Complaint to the European Ombudsman About the EU Anti-Fake News Initiative," HEC Research Papers Series 1273, HEC Paris, revised 30 May 2018.
  • Handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3151424
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Fake news; EU Law; European Ombudsman; Access to Information; Transparency;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)
    • K10 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - General (Constitutional Law)
    • K20 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - General
    • K30 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - General
    • K39 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ebg:heccah:1273. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Antoine Haldemann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/hecpafr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.