XXVⅡ

The “truth” required by news reports shall belong to news truth, and news truth is different from objective truth.When the news media has a reasonable and reliable source and has fulfilled its corresponding verification obligations, then even if the reported content deviates from the objective facts, the news media should not be liable for infringement.

Case: Newspaper A published a report, mainly describing the dispute between B (a commercial plaza) and its tenants, including B’s request for merchants to pay rent, only being able to see contract details after sighing, and fake brands in B’s market.The newspaper A quoted in detail in the article the statements of the merchants and B in contract disputes.B believed that the content of the report was seriously untrue and filed a lawsuit, asking the newspaper A to stop the infringement and publicly apologize.((2018) Jing 03 Min Zhong No.4882)(https://www.daowen.com)

The court held that: News truth is different from objective truth.When the news media has a reasonable and reliable source and has fulfilled its corresponding verification obligations, then even if the reported content deviates from the objective facts, it should not be liable for infringement.In this case, some inaccurate contents in the article are details, and the basic contents reported by the article involved are not false.According to the evidence, the newspaper A has fulfilled the corresponding verification obligation, and its contents are not only the “one party’s word” of the merchants.The article also contains the response of the market party and does not favor one side over the other.The public will not have an unreal and unreasonable evaluation of the market B due to this article, which might have led to a decline in the market’s social evaluation.Therefore, the article did not damage the reputation of the market B.