El respeto a la verdad como límite de la libertad de expresión

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.