Skopje, 13 June 2016 – In the past period, the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services has conducted a number of activities aimed at raising public awareness about the exercise of one’s right to reply and correction. This right is a mechanism that enables citizens and legal entities to call the media to responsibility in cases where the latter have published incorrect information or violated one’s rights and interests, either by accident or intentionally.
With the aim of explaining to the citizens, in a simple and easily understandable language, the provisions of the Media Law regulating the right to reply and correction, a banner has been published on the Agency’s website, titled “Reply and Correction – Who, When, How?”, specifying the possibilities and the rules in exercising the right to reply and correction. Its content is available in the Macedonian and Albanian languages.
To make the information under the banner “Reply and Correction – Who, When, How?” available to an as large part of the public as possible, the Agency has published announcements in several print media and asked all televisions and radios in the Republic of Macedonia, as media aware of their social responsibility and role in their communication with the citizens, to publish banners on their websites containing a link that would lead directly to the relevant content published on the Agency’s website, under the banner “Reply and Correction – Who, When, How?”.
These are the latest activities as part of the Plan for Popularizing the Right to Reply and Correction, which commenced last year. Apart from the citizens and legal entities, the target group of these activities also involves the providers of audio and audiovisual media services for whom a workshop was held in March last year to remind them of their obligations and rights when airing a reply or correction. In addition, the Agency may, in concrete cases, cooperate with the journalists’ associations, the self-regulatory body for ethics in the media and other authorities. The Plan is part of a more extensive Programme for Promoting Media Literacy in the Republic of Macedonia by the Agency for Audio and Audiovisual Media Services.