When none of the media in a country is public, some voices in that society may go unrepresented, and many perspectives will be neglected, especially in highly fragmented societies. This situation may be exacerbated by the current state of the online news market, characterized by the central role of social media platforms in providing access to the news. These players, whose ownership is also concentrated in a few hands, have an outsized role in controlling both revenue streams for media companies, as they control large parts of the advertising market, and the flow of information itself, as they command large audiences and dictate what news content can reach them, as well as how and when it will do so (see Cetina Presuel and Martínez Sierra 2019).
Other threats to exercising the freedom to receive information, as well as threats to the freedom of selecting information, which all individuals should have, could be mentioned. The most positive solution is to encourage the creation of news companies that have a clear commitment to independence and a strong sense of responsibility as expressed by Nieto14 (1973). Several such examples of new media have emerged in recent years, such as journalist societies (sociétés de rédacteurs). These may not resolve problems completely, but they do allow business risks to be spread over diverse stakeholders.
The Right to Impart Information
The right to impart information is the third and last component of the right to communicate established by the UDHR. The right to seek information was the most difficult to exercise in the pre-Internet era. But things are different in the Web 3.0 era. No one questions the right to impart information; in fact, it is the oldest of the first claims to “freedom of expression, printing and press.” The very term “freedom of expression” or “right of expression” puts us in direct contact with dissemination of information. As a result, we can affirm, without exaggeration, that the concept of expression – intimately tied to the concept of dissemination – forms the basis of the rights that I have been analyzing in this chapter.
These rights are complex because not all subjects among individuals, professionals, and organizations can disseminate information. Here I define information as the sum total of ideas and opinions. What makes these rights difficult to understand is the so-called universal subject (the general public): we must understand whether and how the public, without access to news media and without being journalists, can participate in the dissemination of information, news, and opinions. Few options were available before the social Web appeared. One solution was writing letters to the editor, in which an individual could give his or her opinion on certain information or even offer information. Another option was the so-called right to rectification in the event that an individual wished to correct false information in the media.
In the Internet era, individuals can participate in the dissemination of information and opinions through several channels:
user blogs, including children’s blogs;
posts on social sites;
comments in forums on daily newspaper websites;
opinions sent to the radio via WhatsApp;
weather photos provided by viewers of national TV news programs;
online competitions; and
opinions sent to TV programs by SMS.
In democracies, a particularly important time for citizen participation in the diffusion of information is during election campaigns. During these, flows of ideas and information between candidates, representatives, and voters are essential for citizen participation in democracy, as the UN Human Rights Committee pointed out when it “elaborated on the importance of freedom of expression for the conduct of public affairs and the effective exercise of the right to vote. The free communication of information and ideas about public and political issues between citizens, candidates and elected representatives is essential. This implies a free press and other media able to comment on public issues and to inform public opinion without censorship or restraint.”15 Ensuring information flow requires greater press freedom and the absence of censorship. Thus, democratic states are obligated to promote information dissemination during elections.
The strong development of technologies for information sharing, coupled with the globalizing nature of today’s world, is giving citizens an increasingly strong and effective presence in the information world. As a result, it is increasingly common for citizens to become disseminators of news and opinions. For example, in some cases, bloggers can acquire millions of followers and become opinion leaders. Unless they are journalists, such individuals cannot be considered qualified subjects or qualified informers in the legal sense of those terms, yet they become true centers of information dissemination.
Today, many legal possibilities exist for individuals to contribute to information dissemination. These run the gamut from “collaborative journalism,” such as the consortium that covered the Panama Papers, to news media that mimic journalist societies, such as Le Monde; information providers that follow various entrepreneurial models from individual property to crowdfunding initiatives, such as the Dutch daily De Correspondent (MediaLab Press 2017); and finally classical limited companies and corporations. As De Correspondent cofounder and editor Ernst-Jan Pfauth declared (Wijnberg 2014), “If we call someone a subscriber, it suggests that person is a passive consumer who pays for content, reads it and that’s all. What we really want is an active relationship with our readers. That is why we call them members.”
In the United States, influential nonprofit journalism exists in the form of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, which are known as “public media,” though only in the sense that they have a vocation of service to the public. They are NGOs that operate from public donations and funding from the government and foundations. Organizations for investigative journalism, such as ProPublica, are growing in relevance and are seeking crowdfunding.
In all countries, a multiplicity of online media, supported by multiple technological possibilities, has taken root in recent years. These media can offer generalist content or, more importantly, specialized content responding to a greater or lesser extent to the particular needs of a segmented public. This is an area without limits, and we are witnessing the beginning of its development.
This reality, which has only just begun if we take a historical perspective, is accelerating new possibilities for searching for, receiving, and imparting information. Unfortunately, the development of this reality is not without its dangers, which center fundamentally on the ethical use of information dissemination. These dangers also include lies, defamation, attacks on personal rights, and various other forms of insult. Let us hope that Desantes Guanter (1974) was correct when, in thinking about the possibilities for exercising the right to communicate, he said, “There is no doubt that reality will prevail and that the ‘should be’ will slowly but inexorably align with [the right].”
Conclusions
Communication rights are universal because they protect everyone – this is the so-called subjective universality – including all media and platforms that exist today and that will be invented in the future (technical universality). These rights are also universal in the sense that they “exist regardless of frontiers” (Price 2020),16 what we call the geographic universality of communication rights. More relevant to the messages and content of communication is the fact that these rights apply not only to any “expression” and “opinion,” but also to “information and ideas of all kinds.” This includes, of course, journalism, political and religious discourse, opinions contained in financial ratings, commercial advertising, and citizen participation in public affairs.
Various judicial cases, including
