Lawyers, lawmakers, and citizens have called upon authorities to take strict measures to fight against the recent fabrication of stories by several online newspapers to increase page views.

Part 1: Online newspapers fabricate rumors to attract readersPart 2: Online newspapers use tricks to fake page views Part 3: Law enforcement units blamed for fabrications by the press

Apart from violating currents laws, a number of people who call themselves ‘journalists’ and several online newspapers have offended moral codes in publishing fake news, failing to check the accuracy of a story, and meddling in the private lives of others to attract readership.

Many lawmakers and lawyers have agreed with Tuoi Tre’s proposal that laws need to be tightened against such violations.

Nguyen Van Minh--deputy of the National Assembly and vice director of the Department of Culture, Sports, and Tourism in Ho Chi Minh City—confirmed that newspapers that fabricate stories can be charged a violation based on Resolution 37 issued last year and Decree 51 in 2002 by the central lawmaking body.

“We have failed to make a thorough management and it has resulted in the spread of false news,” he stressed.

Relevant management agencies of the State must respond to the fabrication of news as soon as possible and confirm the story is false; if so, they must decide exactly when to settle the case, Minh said. For now, no official word has been given by authorities and so rumors continue to be spread.

National Assembly deputy Nguyen Thuy Trang from Ho Chi Minh City argued that those who fabricate rumors and online newspapers that carry and spread the rumors must be responsible for their violations and subject to punishment.

However, Vietnamese authorities have not been able to decide on a penalty due to the lack of adequate descriptions of the violation. Decree 72 mentions a punishment for those who ‘issue false information to badly affect the private life of others’, but law enforcement has no guidance regarding how to identify what ‘badly affect’ really means or any scale on which to measure the amount of harm done.

Therefore, no one has ever been punished for the offence, she said.

Lawyer Tran Van Hieu in Ho Chi Minh City blamed several ‘sensational online newspapers’ for publishing personal news without the agreement of relevant parties.

The newspapers even invaded the privacy of those charged or accused of a certain crime by writing stories about their wives or husbands, parents, brothers, children, and their social relations to attract readers, Hieu said.

In law, any individual or organization who invades the privacy of others without their agreement is charged with slandering or humiliating others. In short, it is a violation.

Deputy Huynh Ngoc Dang from southern Binh Duong Province sent a message to those ‘sensational online newspapers,’ saying, ‘a journalist must feel ashamed of publishing news in an uncultured manner’.

A criminal will be punished by the law but it is disgraceful for those newspapers to exploit the criminal case by writing stories about the private lives of his wife and parents and relatives.

“Their relatives are innocent. Some papers even published the exact address where their families live,” Dang reminded. “Are you a noble man if you abuse and humiliate another man’s children because he is guilty just to attract readership?”

He admitted that these violations, despite their depravity, are rarely punished by authorities.