I. WORLD CONGRESS OF FREE PRESS

MANIFESTO OF MADRID

1. Free Press constitutes one of the most relevant phenomena happened in the field of communication and journalism in the last years.
2. Free Press supports reading, and allows a broader and better access of the population to information, culture, social participation and democratic habits.
3. Free Press covers an important social role, creates social tissue, and supports cohesion in the communities of readers, to whom it is addressed.
4. Free Press creates reinforcement for the right of freedom of expression and of the other public freedoms in a democratic society.
5. Free Press, which is elaborated with criteria of highest quality, has implied an innovation in the exercise of journalism; and the professionals elaborating it, do that with criteria of maximum quality, ethics, seriousness and independence.
6. Free Press is a beneficial agent for the economy in its whole, since they create employment and wealth, and support competition, and imply a stop to prices’ rise.
7. Free Press provides the advertisers innovative and more efficient ways to have their products known by the population.
8. Free Press requests to public institutions to be treated with fairness, both in provision of information and in concern with institutional advertisement.
9. Free Press creates new readers, hence contributing to the development and future of all the communication media.
10. Free Press is, in the end, a public good.

 

                                         Madrid (Spain), October 2nd, 2008