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.
