Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra
Abstract
The study of the Conscience Clause requires, in order to obtain a complete
view of the subject matter, the analysis of its projection in the sphere proper
to the Information Business.
In the past few years the Information Enterprise has undergone notable
changes which directly affect its juridical, economic, and organizational framework.
The essential starting point of these transformations has been the consideration
of the end itself of the information business, this end being centered
upon the task of spreading information and ideas through the means and modes
of social communications.
The equilibrium which the Conscience Clause at first intended to establish
-granting the journalist certain rights which apparently defended in an efficient
manner his freedom of thought and his honor- has been upset as a consequence
of the development and metamorphosis of the business itself. The news
reporter is no longer the only claimant of this juridical protection, and the journalist
also no longer tends to be the only news reportero
The explicit setting down of the body of specified knowledge which inspires
the content of information and which lays the foundation of the activity of the
business can be one of the ways of making efficacious the rights which fall
under the protection of the Conscience Clause. This specific body of knowledge
is what the author of this paper calls -Editorial Principies». In them we find
the roots which firmly anchor the line of thought which presides over the
activity which is proper to the business of giving information.
Furthermore, the man whose business is informing must be attributed the
exercise of the rights which protect his business'line of thought. But this
protection must also be extended to all those who are integrated within the
Information Enterprise.
The Editorial Principies must be inserted in an adequate framework in
order that their operative functioning be efficiently guaranteed. This may be
done via social statutes, contracts for work or the rendering of services, subscription
contracts, labor settlements, Business Statutes, etc.
Both Spanish and compared legislation -so much in the case of the information
business as in the realm of a more general character with regard to the
right to work- offer some possibility of admitting the insertion of the Editorial
Principies, configurating them as an essental factor of the internal and external
relations of the business. However, in an impelling trajectory of the integration
process of everyone working directly in or rendering services to the Information
Enterprise, it beco mes necessary to arbitrate new juridical channels and forms
of business organization which allow the safeguarding of the effectiveness of
the Editorial Principies. The present study on the Conscience Clause is dedicated
precisely to an exposition of possible new formulae which facilitate the aims
indicated above