The Media Council for Self-Regulation received a complaint from Dragana Maljević. In her complaint, among other things, she stated that she was contacting the Council regarding an article published by the portal Kodex in 2016. In the complaint, she requested that the personal data of an individual, who was a minor at the time the article was created ten years ago, be removed from the text.
She believes that this information, which remains online, specifically on one particular media outlet, continues to affect the personal integrity, social, and community life of this individual.
The person in question had made several attempts to contact the journalists of Kodex.me, but without success, which is why she turned to the Media Council for Self-Regulation. The Council’s Complaints Committee reviewed this correspondence, which was more a request for the deletion of personal data than a formal complaint. The correspondence did not dispute the facts presented in the article; it solely requested the removal of the personal data of the individual who was a minor at the time of the article’s publication.
It is important to note that the age of the individual at the time was not the only relevant factor in this case. The Media Council for Self-Regulation recently published a study on the “Right to be Forgotten,” which indicates that certain individuals who are not public officials have the right, after a certain period, to request the removal of some information or even the entire article if it could later cause difficulties in the daily lives of people who were previously the subject of journalistic attention.
Based on all of the above, the Complaints Committee concluded that the request should be accepted and that it is appropriate to approach the editorial office of the Kodex portal with a request to remove either the personal information from the article or the entire article.
The Kodex editorial team, from the first contact, understood the situation, so there was no need to further explain that an article from ten years ago is now causing significant problems for an individual who was a minor at the time. The portal’s editorial team agreed to remove the entire article from Kodex.me.
In this way, mediation between the complainant and the mentioned portal was successfully completed. The Complaints Committee unanimously adopted the information on the mediation of this complaint at the meeting held on 10 April, 2025.
Ranko Vujović
Executive Secretary
Media Council for Self-Regulation
