Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra
Abstract
The law regulating the press affirms -as do the most renowned texts at
the international level upon the consecration of the right to information- that
freedom of expression cannot be unlimited but rather that it must on the
contrary accommodate itself to some guidelines which layout the frontiers of
this right. Among the restraints most universally imposed upon the freedom
of emission of thought, there exists one which clearly stands out, due to
its generalized acceptance: the respect of truth.
Truth walks hand in hand with sincerity. Any type of duality, any rupture
between intimate thought and the expression of this thought is correctly
understood as the lack of sincerity and therefore as the lack of truth.
The right to information which belongs to the public requires objective
and truthful contento Any kind of manipulation, any falsehood committed by
the social communications media therefore implies a violation of this basic
right.
Commutative justice demands the equilibrium between the counteractions
involved: if the people buy newspapers, it is because they expect to receive
objective information; justice demands that they be given the truth which
they have sought to acquire. Without fraud nor half-truths. For this reason,
moralists and theologians have been able to affirm that truth is a "pars
justitiae-. Truth, however, does not have an absolute value. -It is not always
convenient to say all the truth. the moralists subtlely point out. At times,
a secret can be more respectable than an open indiscretion: the safeguard
of national security, the prudence that must be a guiding principie of courts
of law, and the respect due to the honor and the privacy of the individual
are just a few of the many barriers which must be raised in the stream of
unrestrained information.
However true it may be that it is never licit to consciously communicate
falsehood, in some cases there may exist an excuse for mistakes made by
the professional, especially when he has to work with second-hand materials.
Just the same, no error can ever be allowed to slip by through un excusable
ignorance.
Professional deontology must be very demanding at the hour of programming
retractions in those cases of false information being given. The media
must have the courage to rectify whenever the mendacity of what has been
transmitted has been discovered -a posteriori-; in such an event, there must
not exist any fear of suffering a possible setback stemming from the disavowal
of its editors and collaborators.
For economic reasons, the truth and the information given may clash
head-on in the realm of advertising. There lies the danger of editorial publicity
whereby the message can be distorted or veiled with regard to the public.
Here again, a demanding code of ethics should clearly state -without any
kind of watering-down- the guidelines through which the advertising message
is sufficiently identified
