Opinion ID: 780589
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Report of Official Acts

Text: 86 Section 4103 also applies to plaintiff's activities. Mangual investigated and reported the details of the judicial proceedings against Betancourt. Mangual also reported on other acts of official character, the internal investigations of the police department. Section 4103 states that, as to judicial or legislative acts, or any other act of official character, any report or statement which is true and fair shall [not] be considered to be libelous. The official Spanish version, enacted in 1974, uses imparcial y exacta, rendered in the official English translation as true and fair. 87 Taking the statute as officially translated, we think the fairness requirement is itself constitutionally deficient. A true report of an official act is not protected; the report must be fair as well. It is inconsistent with First Amendment standards to require that a true statement about official acts must also be fair. Further, when proving actual malice, falsity is not established by minor inaccuracies, whether deliberate or not. Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, 501 U.S. 496, 516-17, 111 S.Ct. 2419, 115 L.Ed.2d 447 (1991). In order to amount to a known or reckless falsehood, the alteration must result in a material change in the meaning conveyed by the statement. Id. at 517, 111 S.Ct. 2419; see Crane v. Ariz. Republic, 972 F.2d 1511, 1521 (9th Cir.1992). Otherwise, small inaccuracies, if the product of knowing or reckless behavior, could form the basis of liability even when commenting about public officials or figures. 88 Mangual and the intervenors argue that the translation of the passage as true and fair is neither true nor fair: they say the original Spanish translates more accurately to impartial and exact. Their complaint appears to be a valid one. See Oxford Spanish Dictionary 277, 335 (1996). Indeed, the only other Puerto Rico statute that has a passage which is translated as true and fair is 33 P.R. Laws Ann. § 517(5), and there the original Spanish is verdadero y justo. Were the statute read literally in Spanish, an exactness standard (even an impartiality standard) is even more clearly constitutionally deficient, for the reasons stated above. 89 In the end, the constitutional infirmity does not depend on whether the original Spanish or the official English translation is relied upon. Section 4103 is not broad enough to privilege minor inaccuracies when reporting on government acts, statements, or debates. 90