Article 19.
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I am a great personal believer in the importance of information. Without going into all the sources or reasons here, I have a great belief in the common sense of the population. Because I believe that people will generally treat each other with respect and kindness if they are not driven by fear or ignorance.
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has a passage that is particularly helpful. “The right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
One of the most striking examples of the importance of information in both my own country Norway and across the world, regards the propaganda campaign which was launched in September 2002. The campaign was launched by the Bush administration to drive US public opinion completely off the spectrum, so as to garner support for the upcoming invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In the US the propaganda succeeded almost flawlessly. The vast majority of the main stream media outlets followed the administration’s lead and acted as its loudspeaker. Support for the war was completely dependent on the belief that the US was in imminent danger from an attack from Iraq.
This propaganda campaign failed miserably outside the US though. It was hard to find any country outside the USA, Britain, Israel and India where support for the war was higher than 10%, and each of these countries had their own reasons for supporting the war.
If you take Norway as an example, about 90% of the people were against the invasion of Iraq. When I have asked Americans why they believe that so many Norwegians were against the war, none of them were able to see the obvious answer.
The obvious answer is that the Norwegian people actually had main stream access to real information about Iraq, and just as the people in Iraq’s neighboring countries, everybody hated Saddam Hussein, but nobody was afraid of him.
Iraq had been devastated by war and sanctions and could not possibly threaten any of its neighbors, and certainly not the world’s undisputed superpower. The Norwegian population could see the truth of this situation on TV or in news papers.
Strong elements in the Norwegian government were supportive of the war, and wanted to join the invasion of Iraq, just as countries like Denmark and Britain had. But with such an overwhelming majority of the people being against the war, any involvement in the invasion was impossible for political reasons.
When some in the Norwegian main stream media somewhat bought into the message spread by CNN and similar news organizations in the US media, these were simply laughed out of the room for their lack of professionalism and insight by the rest of the media, even if they happened to be the largest commercial TV station in Norway and the largest tabloid news paper.
If Norwegians had been exposed to the same propaganda day in and day out as the Americans were, then there is a good chance Norway would have been on the front lines in the invasion of Iraq as well. But in this case the generally good purveyors of information in Norway made it impossible for the Norwegian government to take part in the criminal and unlawful invasion of Iraq.
With this and thousands of other available examples in mind, I believe that one of the most important human rights is this right to information and ideas from all possible sources, because if all you hear is propaganda, then the propaganda is what you will believe.
Because of this lack of knowledge among the general population, every country in the world is able to commit crimes or atrocities which the people would never stand for if they knew the truth. The more powerful a country is, like the US, Russia, China, Britain etc, the more important for the well being of the world the information will be.
There cannot be real democracy without real information and real knowledge, and without real democracy I am convinced we cannot have real peace, real prosperity, real equality, real sustainability or real justice.
From Without 