Mass media and human rights: the facts done and the rights

Abstract

There is a positive relation between human rights and the media. The social function carried out by the media takes place in direct contact with the needs and demands of the citizens. The press plays a mediator role between citizenship and the fulfillment of human rights being the first one the right to be informed. Let us look at the journalistic task as a service to the common good: the means to form public opinion and social conscience, to spread and make known facts and to facilitate the exercise or the demand of rights as well as the «coercive capacity» of the media to publicize abuses. The informative task has its risks and malfunctions as we will see in the following pages.