- 13/07/2026
- Posted by: Marta
- Category: Questions and answers
Dear Dongo Lawyer,
Our food industry has been subject to a recall order for several batches of its products due to suspected non-compliance with microbiological criteria. Further investigation and analysis have proven to be completely unfounded. Since the alert was reported with alarmist tones by numerous online outlets, we have submitted requests for corrections. In some cases, however, the corrections were published in separate articles from the original ones, in a manner that we find unsatisfactory. What can be done?
Thank you very much, [signed letter]
The lawyer Dario Dongo, Ph.D. in international food law, answers
Il right of rectification It was established immediately after the war - with the readers 8 February 1948, n. 47, in article 8 - and the Italian legislator has not yet taken care of updating the regulations with regard to online communication, which is often managed by newspapers not registered with the Courts.
La giurisprudenza of legitimacy and merit has partly filled these gaps, without however fully grasping some essential technical aspects In the age of the web and AI, defamatory news stories, unaccompanied by the views of those directly involved who requested them, remain preserved and accessible for decades.
Nature and legal value of the right of rectification
The right of rectification does not constitute a mere right of reply, but rather a subjective legal situation rooted in the right to personal identity and reputation. The Court of Cassation, already with the sentence n. 10690/2008 [1], has qualified the interest of each person in preserving his own identity and reputation as «position of subjective right in accordance with the principles established by art. 2 of the Constitution regarding the protection of personality in the complexity and unity of all its components», with the consequence that each of its injuries «allows the possibility of exercising the inhibitory, compensatory and special remedies provided by the legal system», among which is the instrument referred to in art. 8 of Law 47/1948.
From an operational point of view, the institute has an optional nature: both thean how much the quomodo of the request are left to the subjective evaluation of the person who believes himself to be harmed, who has the exclusive right to assess the harmful nature of the writing and define the content of the rectification. This power corresponds, on the part of the responsible director, not to a discretionary power but to a publication obligation. The Court of Cassation (judgment no. 23835/2010) [2] has specified that the director «is burdened by a real obligation, which corresponds to a subjective legal position of the interested party, which finds its limit exclusively in the case of criminal relevance of the declarations or corrections».
Article 8 of Law 47/1948 — in the text amended by Article 42 of Law 416/1981 [3] — subordinates compliance to mandatory formal proceduresThe correction must be published free of charge and in its entirety, without comments and within the thirty-line limit; for newspapers, within two days of receiving the request; and, above all, on the same page and with the same graphic highlighting as the corrected news itemThis last prescription expresses the principle of information equivalence, according to which placement on a different page or heading is neither sufficient nor appropriate to satisfy the interested party's rights. The reason is substantial: the correction must reach, to the greatest extent possible, the same audience exposed to the original news item, under the same conditions of visibility and perceptual immediacy.
La breach of obligation does not result in a breach of contract accessory to defamation. The Court of Cassation (order no. 13520/2017) [4] has clarified that it «constitutes a distinct and independent offence with respect to defamation, finding its basis in the violation of the right to personal identity, which can exist independently from that of honor and reputation". It follows that the right to rectification may be infringed regardless of the lawfulness of the publication which gave rise to the request, given its autonomous foundation in the right to identity and personal reputation.
The insufficiency of the autonomous article
From these premises it follows, with logical rigor, that the publication of a different article — even if it contains the interested party's statements and is exhaustive in its merits — does not amount to fulfilling the obligation to rectifyThis is what ordinance no. 1152/2022 [5] itself stated: they cannot be considered equivalent, and therefore suitable to exempt the director from following up on the request. ex Article 8, the mere publication of another article containing statements from the injured party; the rectification must occur according to the specific procedures established by law.
La ratio It's immediately obvious. A separate article exists independently: it can appear on a different date and in a different section, reach a different audience, and, most importantly, fail to reach those who read the original story and have no reason to seek an update. It is defective, in other words, that spatial, visual and contextual proximity between erroneous information and the correction that the formal procedures of Article 8 are intended to guarantee.
Applicability to online newspapers and the European perspective
These principles extend to online newspapers. The United Sections of the Court of Cassation - both criminal (judgment no. 31022/2015) [6] and civil (judgment no. 23469/2016) [7] - have recognised thefunctional equivalence between the regularly registered online newspaper and the traditional press, with the consequent application of the same discipline and related guarantees. The form of the medium is irrelevant: what matters is the purpose of public disclosure inherent in journalistic activity, regardless of the medium employed.
On this basis, the Court of Turin, with an order dated 6 April 2018 [8], considered that art. 8 of law 47/1948 should be the subject of a «analogical interpretation, capable of allowing the rule to respond to the protection needs brought by thetechnological evolution", with the consequence that the provision, "even if referring to the paper press», it turns out «also applicable to articles published by a online newspaper». For these newspapers — the Court specified — «a must be identified different rectification method, capable of ensuring the effectiveness of the protection of the interests protected by the law».
The method thus identified consists in the publication of the text of the rectification - prepared by the interested party and after verifying compliance with the thirty-line limit and the absence of criminally relevant content - «at the bottom of each individual article (identified through the URL)The technical rationale is clear: each online article has a unique address (URL) through which it is independently indexed, shared, and accessed, independently of any other content on the same site. Only by adding the correction to the specific article ensures that anyone accessing the original article—regardless of the path they follow—will immediately encounter the correction, which is contextual and unequivocally linked to the corrected content.
European jurisprudence, in particular the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), has consistently reiterated the importance of the right to reputation and personal identity, balancing it with freedom of expression. In the case Axel Springer SE v. Germany (2023) [9], the ECHR reaffirmed that the primary purpose of the right of rectification is to enable individuals to challenge information published about them. The Court held that requiring the publication of a correction to a newspaper article did not violate the publisher's freedom of expression, especially when the correction aimed to re-establish the truth of the facts. This reinforces the idea that the obligation to rectify constitutes a legitimate and necessary means of protecting individual rights, and that the modalities of such rectification must be effective.
Furthermore, the Consolidated text of the duties of journalists [10], in force from 1 January 2021, in Article 9, letter 'a', clearly establishes that the journalist «rectification, even in the absence of a specific request, promptly and with appropriate emphasis, of information which, after its dissemination, has been revealed to be inaccurate or incorrectThis ethical duty reinforces the legal obligation and emphasizes the need for corrections that are not only timely but also visible and appropriate to the context of the original publication, including online publications.
The inappropriateness of the correction made on a different URL
In light of the above, it is reiterated that:
- the correction must reach the same audience under the same visibility conditions;
- a standalone article does not fulfill this function;
- in the digital environment the unit of reference is the single URL.
Consequently, a 'correction' published in an article with a different URL than the original article does not constitute rectification in the legal sense. It integrates, at most, a voluntary act of additional information, not suitable to exempt the person responsible for the newspaper from the consequences of non-compliance and liable to be evaluated by the judge as a non-existent or incomplete rectification. lack of a direct and immediate connection The discrepancy between the original news item and the correction on a different URL undermines the principle of information equivalence and the remedial effectiveness of the institution, as recognized by Italian and European jurisprudence and by ethical principles.
Consequences of non-compliance
From a sanctioning perspective, failure or incomplete compliance with the obligation to rectify is now punished - as a result of decriminalisation - with administrative sanction from €1.549 to €2.582 (Article 8, last paragraph, Law 47/1948). From a civil law perspective, since it is a distinct and autonomous offence with respect to the possible defamatory nature of the original article, the violation of the right to personal identity entitles the interested party to exercise inhibitory, compensatory and special remedies provided by the legal system (Cass. n. 10690/2008) [1].
Finally, it should be underlined that the rectification, even if correctly carried out, fulfills a restorative function but does not eliminate the damage already produced. Defamation generates an instantaneous damage: the rectification serves to prevent the further propagation of the harmful effects, not to cancel those that have already occurred. In accordance with this, the Court of Cassation (order no. 1152/2022) [5] has established that «the publication of a rectification does not automatically lead to a reduction in damages, as a concrete assessment of the relative impact on the specific damage already occurred must be carried out.". Even more so, a correction made in an inappropriate form — on a different URL — will not be able to have any effect on the mitigation of the damage.
Crisis management and communication
La crisis management food safety and reputational issues require particular care and specific skills also in defining and maintaining the communication with the various subjects involved:
- The stakeholder (supervisory authorities, customers, consumers);
- the editorial offices of offline and online newspapers and specialized magazines;
- online news aggregators;
- the numerous bloggers and managers of pages and groups on social networks.
News aggregators, blogs and social networks effectively operate as amplifiers Initial reports, generally originating from public notices of withdrawal or recall of products at risk, whether actual or presumed. It is therefore essential to trace the primary source of the information and subsequent reiterations by authoritative sources, in order to obtain the rectification, correction, or addition of inaccurate or incomplete information, and then intervene further down the information chain to promote its proper dissemination.
Our team of FARE (Food and Agriculture Requirements) supports industries and large-scale retail groups in crisis management and related communications, with over 30 years of specialist professional experience in both areas.
cordiality
Dario Dongo
References
[1] Court of Cassation, III Civil Section, 24 April 2008, no. 10690.
[2] Court of Cassation, III Civil Section, 24 November 2010, no. 23835.
[3] Law 5 August 1981, n. 416, art. 42 (amending art. 8 law 47/1948).
[4] Court of Cassation, III Civil Section, order of 30 May 2017, no. 13520.
[5] Court of Cassation, III Civil Section, 24 June 2021 (dep. 17 January 2022), no. 1152.
[6] Court of Cassation, United Criminal Sections, 29 January 2015 (dep. 17 July 2015), no. 31022.
[7] Court of Cassation, United Civil Sections, 18 November 2016, no. 23469.
[8] Turin Court, order of 6 April 2018.
[9] European Court of Human Rights, Axel Springer SE v. Germany, Judgment of 17 January 2023.
[10] Consolidated text of the duties of journalists, Article 9, letter a), in force from 1 January 2021 (https://www.odg.it/testo-unico-dei-doveri-del-giornalista/24288).
