Cláusula de conciencia, principios editoriales y empresario de la información

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.