But, there can be no specific defense against fake profiles set up by political operatives who troll the comment sections of the media's Facebook pages just creating all kind of defamation mayhem. It may just be Facebook sparring, but media houses can also be threatened with suit over such comments - even if we didn't publish it.
So, the fake profiles are a real problem - and here are three perspectives on it:
Marleni Cuellar, C.E.O., Great Belize Television
"I do feel that media deserves special protection as well, because when we are no longer able to put the information out to the public and allow for public discourse, because we must be constantly monitoring what very often are political throes to go on and make defamatory comments, then it will reach the point as we see in places like Australia where they closed off all commentary on facebook posts."
Hon. Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education
"What the bill does provide for is to bring under the law unestablished media, so where you have facebook pages or social media pages that are holding themselves out to be media houses, or operating as media outlets, they are of course held accountable. They are saying like hot off the press as an example Breaking Belize News, these are strictly online media outlets, self-describe media outlets, but nobody knows who is behind them, so they are what you called unestablished media and they are captured under this bill. So they have to be held responsible and accountable as well, but thats an entirely different from individuals having fake facebook profiles. That is a matter that has to be policed by facebook and there is a process for reporting of facebook profiles, fake profiles."
Hon. Shyne Barrow, Cmte. Member
"Those people putting up those comments need to be held responsible and I do believe we found a moderate ground whereas the media would be given time to remove those comments and I think that would solve it."
