Reflections on the Right to Information Based on Citizenship Theories

Abstract

In modern societies, structured as representative democracies, all rights to some extent are related to the right to information: the enlargement of participation in citizenship presupposes an enlargement of the right to information as a premise. It is a right which encourages the exercising of citizenship and aff ords the citizens access to and criticism of the instruments necessary for the full exercising of the group of citizenship rights. The right to information can have characteristics of emancipation or of tutelage. An emancipating right is a right to freedom, a right whose basic presupposition is freedom of choice. Accordingly, the maxim which could sum up the ethical issue of the right to information would be: give maximum publicity to everything which refers to the public sphere and keep secret that which refers to the private sphere.