Freedom of the press, like all freedoms, necessarily
comes with limits.
Limits, intellectual, ethical and moral requirements, qualitative requirements
regarding inner formation, self-knowledge and self-mastery, and social and
relational capabilities free of prejudice are hardly ever spoken about.
The recent World Press Freedom Day provided UNESCO with the opportunity to draw
attention to the relationship between “media freedom,” “access to information”
and the “multi-dimensional social and political process that helps people gain
control over their own lives.”
UNESCO explains that “this can only be achieved through access to accurate, fair
and unbiased information, representing a plurality of opinions,” and that “there
must be law ensuring access to information, especially information in the public
domain.”
Magnificent, but these ideal conditions do not sprout up like mushrooms.
UNESCO is well aware of this, because it adds that media professionals have a
duty to adhere to “the highest ethical and professional standards” and that
citizens must have the necessary skills to understand the information, use it in
their daily lives…and hold the media accountable for its actions.
What emerges from all of this is the essential requirement for a demanding and
serious formative training of the individual, based on the necessary battle
against individual limits and faults and the necessary lasting culture of
acquired virtues.
Simple intellectual cerebral capability, or IQ, is not enough. The acquisition
and incorporation of virtues is never the result, automatic or miraculous, of
“magical” thought or “neural” thought.
Moreover, UNESCO notes that “financial imperatives drive corporate media away
from these core principles and into profit centers that do not cater to smaller
or marginalized populations.”
