Towards a Theology of Communication Rights
By Philip Lee
[Philip Lee joined the staff of the World Association for Christian Communication in 1975, where he is currently Deputy Director of Programs and Editor of the international journal Media Development.]
Abstract
A conspicuous absence in the field of communication and theology presents a challenge to theologians and communicators alike. It is the absence of a theology of communication rights, which this text seeks to address by identifying “pointers” drawing on the theory and practice of communication for development, the “capability approach,” and the right to communicate debate. It argues that, if globalization is to have moral validity, it must bring with it an enhanced sense of globalized humanity. As such, we must ask if we are willing to live in a world with disenfranchised people – the “new slaves” of society. If not, we are obliged by our faith and our common humanity to take responsibility for the world’s failings. Unless we work to understand the structures and inadequacies that enable marginalization and oppression to persist, and unless we take action to change them, we are complicit with injustice.
Introduction
In 1971 Gustavo Gutiérrez published his seminal book Teología de la liberación (known in English as A Theology of Liberation). In it he wrote, “The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited” (Gutiérrez, 1974: 208). The book reflects the radical thinking that took place at the Latin American Bishops’ Conference in Medellín, Colombia) which, in turn, informed the following Conference in Puebla, Mexico (1979). During the Puebla Conference, the term “preferential option for the poor” was coined. The Bishops clearly stated “this option does not imply exclusion of anyone, but it does imply a preference for the poor and a drawing closer to them” (Puebla, 1979: sec. 733). In other words, it implies inclusion and collective solidarity. The preferential option for the poor has strong christological roots. Jesus identifies with all victims of marginalization, poverty, and injustice, choosing to be one with the poor and the outcast.
Jesus specifically proclaimed the good news to poor people and liberation to captives (Lk. 4:15–19). In fact, we do not have to search hard for scriptural exhortations to show solidarity with the marginalized peoples of this world. One of the most compelling is to be found towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount, from which clearly liberation theology’s “option for the poor” represents inclusivity of the highest order: Then the king will say to those on his right, “Come, my Father’s blessed ones, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me, thirsty and you refreshed me, a stranger and you entertained me, naked and you clothed me, ailing and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” Then the just nations will reply, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and fed you, or thirsty and refreshed you; when did we see you a stranger and entertained you, or naked and clothed you; when did we see you ailing, or in prison, and visited you?” Then the king will answer them, “I tell you truly, in so far as you did it to one of these humble brothers of mine you did it to me” (Matthew’s Version of the Good News of Jesus Christ, 25:34–40 in The Original New Testament, 1985: 113).
Social responsibility for, and empathy with, those in need are not confined to Christianity. Other faith traditions include an ethic of compassion in their beliefs. Compassion (karunā or the desire to remove harm and suffering from others) is at the transcendental and experiential heart of the Buddha’s teachings. In the various Hindu traditions, compassion is called daya, and, along with charity and self-control, is one of the five virtues. In the Jewish tradition, God is invoked as the Father of Compassion. The Old Testament speaks of the thirteen attributes of mercy or compassion (Exod. 34:6–7) and the repeated injunctions in the Law and the Prophets that widows, orphans, and strangers should be protected.
Compassion for all life, human and non-human, is central to the Jain tradition in which, although all life is considered sacred, human life is deemed the highest form of earthly existence. In parallel with the emergence of liberation theology, at least three other trajectories can be discerned during the last decades of the twentieth century and the first of the twenty-first. They are communication for social development (in Africa, Asia, and Latin America); the extensive and far-reaching work of social theorist Jürgen Habermas; and the communication rights movement (from the early debate about a New World Information and Communication Order to the more recent Campaign for Communication Rights in the Information Society). Each of these four trajectories displays traits of a communication philosophy and a communication ethics that together provide a framework for a theology of communication rights that reaches out to the poor and marginalized as both witness to, and preparation for, the ideal of the Kingdom of God.
From the New Slavery to Enhancing People’s Capabilities
Among the approximately 27 million people doing simple, non-technological, traditional work South and North who comprise the “new slavery” of the global economic system, the common denominator is poverty. As one critic points out, “The criteria of enslavement today do not concern color, tribe, or religion; they focus on weakness, gullibility, and deprivation” (Bales, 1999: 11). These factors are crucial because, in today’s world, slaves are no longer purchased and owned, although they remain grossly exploited. Today’s slaveholders avoid any vestige of the responsibility that the legal ownership of slaves used to entail and they simply get as much work as they can out of their slaves before abandoning them. Like cardboard waste, today’s slaves are “disposable.” In some sense this echoes the “disposability” of the millions of poor and marginalized people who die or suffer in the countless civil and invasive wars that are taking place worldwide.
In advanced democracies, where the government has a monopoly over armed violence, the expectation is that when violence occurs, the counterbalancing force of the state will be brought to bear through its police and judiciary. In contrast, in less democratic or less stable societies, the state’s monopoly on violence has been turned against its own citizens. Conflict, poverty, and disposability tend to go hand in hand. In most countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia – an appalling statistic when one stops to consider it – the army, police, and paramilitary groups have been used to oppress and repress, leading to communal disintegration and destitution. “Without protection or alternatives, the poor become powerless, and the violent, without state intervention, become supremely powerful” (Bales, 1999: 30). People subject to such lawlessness and violence become “disposable” in the minds of their aggressors. Tragically, they also appear to be “disposable” in the minds of superpowers and global corporations whose larger geopolitical or economic interests often outweigh any moral or ethical imperatives. In such grave situations, increasing the capacity of poor and marginalized people to communicate their hopes, fears and needs in order to improve their lives is recognized by many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as vital to a more just future for all. “When people most affected by social inequity have the confidence and abilities to access, manage and control the processes, tools and content of communication, development efforts are more sustainable and effective” (www.communicationforsocialchange.org/).
In both South and North, information and knowledge are essential for people to respond adequately and successfully to the opportunities of political, social, economic, and cultural change. But to be useful, knowledge and information must be available, accessible, and communicated effectively among people. And even though they are connected to global sources and networks through modern telecommunications or learn about health care from folk proverbs and traditional medicine, or listen to radio broadcasts on HIV/AIDS, people still communicate and learn best when they act together, locally. What is sometimes overlooked is that communication for development and social change must be systematically planned, coordinated, and implemented together with the very people it is intended to serve. Communication systems need to be established to meet the needs of all involved: working partnerships created with national ministries for development, the environment, women’s affairs, social services, health, and information and communication systems. In particular, rural communication networks should involve civil society – NGOs, universities, adult capacity-building centers, faith-based organizations and the private sector. Without them, millions of people are likely to be excluded from a wide range of information and knowledge, and the rural poor especially, isolated from both community media and from new information and communication technologies.
Nobel-prize-winning economist Amartya Sen has broadly defined the goal of development as the expansion of human freedoms (Sen, 1985; 1999). He articulates five such freedoms as well as the complementary relationships between them. They are: (1) Political freedom (people’s opportunities to determine who should govern and under which principles, freedom to evaluate and criticize authorities, freedom of expression, right to dialogue, to oppose, to vote, and to be involved in legislative and executive elections); (2) Economic facilities (an individual’s opportunities to use economic resources with the purpose of consumption, production or exchange); (3) Social opportunities (the way society organizes itself to provide education, health and social services, which contribute to effective participation in governance; (4) Transparency guarantees (the assumption of trust that guarantees open and transparent attitudes and contributes to the prevention of corruption); (5) Protective security (those vulnerable situations that require social safety nets).
These freedoms strengthen an individual’s or a community’s capabilities, and, from this point of view, poverty is exacerbated by the lack of such basic capabilities. Pursuing this argument, Sen and political philosopher Martha Nussbaum have jointly developed a “capability approach” as a way of understanding social conditions in terms of human welfare (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993; Nussbaum, 2003). It emphasizes functional capabilities – in which “functioning is an achievement of a person: what she or he manages to do or be” (Sen, 1985: 10) – which depend on a range of personal and social factors. “Functionings” encompass the use people make of the commodities at their command. “Capabilities” reflect a person’s ability to carry out a given functioning or to function in different ways. Sen later refined this to mean “the alternative combination of functionings the person can achieve, from which he or she can choose one collection” (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993: 31). The notion of functionings – which can be elementary (avoiding disease and mortality, having nourishment and mobility); complex (self-respect, participating in community life, able to appear in public without shame); general (the capability to be nourished); or specific (the capability to make particular choices) – has influenced the empirical measurements that underpin the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which moves beyond the sphere of economic measurements to encompass data on health and education.
However, there is no fixed or definitive list of capabilities, and the selection and weighting of capabilities depend on personal value judgments. This failure to identify a coherent list of capabilities has been criticized (Williams, 1987; Qizilbash, 1998). Nussbaum has elaborated on Sen’s work, drawing heavily on Aristotelian philosophy, to compile a list that “isolates those human capabilities that can be convincingly argued to be of central importance in any human life, whatever else the person pursues or chooses” (Nussbaum, 2000: 74). The list emphasizes: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; political and material control over one’s environment. This list, whose core categories have changed little over the years, may not take sufficient account of the values inherent in specific cultural and social contexts in the South. In response, Sen has observed that: “The problem is not with listing important capabilities, but with insisting on one predetermined canonical list of capabilities, chosen by theorists without any general social discussion or public reasoning… [which] can lead to a better understanding of the role, reach and significance of particular capabilities” (Sen, 2004: 77, 81). This echoes civil society’s plea to avoid top-down solutions by empowering people to build societies that are people-centered, inclusive and equitable – societies in which everyone can freely create, access, utilize, share and disseminate information and knowledge, so individuals, communities and peoples can improve their quality of life and achieve their full potential (Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs, 2003).
The Role of Communication for Development
The whole rationale of communication for development is made explicit when the causes of poverty are allied to capability-deprivation. There are many ways to deprive a person of capabilities, e.g. lack of access to resources and training, lack of financial resources, and, crucially, lack of access to communications. What is important is not only how human beings function, but their having the capability to function in significant ways if they so wish. Such an approach to human wellbeing depends on freedom of choice, the diversity of individuals and communities, and the multi-dimensional nature of welfare. In significant respects, the capability approach is consistent with the existence of claims, such as rights, which normatively precede utility-based claims. The capability approach underpins the work of Panos (London), an NGO that promotes the participation of poor and marginalized people in national and international development debates through media and communication projects (see http://www.panos.org.uk/). Panos believes that sustainable development depends on a process that allows people to be their own agents of change: to act individually and collectively, using their own ingenuity to access ideas, practices, and knowledge in the search for ways to fulfil their potential as human beings. This requires the capacity to participate in a wide range of decisions that affect people’s lives directly and indirectly. Therefore, concentrating more resources on building and implementing better communication and information exchange among people – and between people and governments – can increase the power and ability of individuals to take a meaningful part in debates and decision-making processes. However, if such change is to benefit the poor, providing general support for information and communication processes is not enough. The emphasis needs to be on strengthening the communication rights of poor and marginalized people who, because of their disadvantaged situation, already face substantial barriers. The capacity of poor people to make their voices heard is limited: they often lack access to decision-makers and to costly communication technologies such as phones and computers, as well as the skills to use them. Even within communities, social customs and power structures exclude or silence some groups, especially women, refugees, and internally displaced people.
As Panos is at pains to stress: Open, participatory information and communication processes lie at the heart of changing societies and individual behavior. They contribute substantially to better, more transparent, and accountable governance, to the creation of a vibrant and dynamic civil society, and to rapid and more equitable economic growth. But they need to be put at the service of the poor, who want to be informed, to understand and contribute to the debates and decisions that affect their lives – at community, national and international levels (Panos, 2007: 25). It is worth recalling what communication for development is about, before considering how recognizing and strengthening communication rights might make a positive contribution.
Scholars are generally agreed that early models of imposed (top-down) development need to be abandoned in favor of consultation, participation, and self-determination. Radical changes in thinking over the past fifty years can be summarized in terms of a deeper understanding of:
The nature of communication, emphasizing process, the significance of process
Communication as a two-way event, providing and disseminating information for which there is an expressed need
Culture as a normative context
Participatory democracy, greater literacy, and increased capacity to handle and use communication technologies
Imbalances in communication resources and the digital divide, which can only be addressed in terms of power
Globalization and cultural hybridity
What is happening within the boundaries of the nation-state
The impact of communication technology
The shift from “information societies” to “knowledge societies”
The existence of dualistic or parallel communication structures
(Servaes and Patchanee, 2005: 100–103).
While communication for development demands the existence of spaces and resources for everyone to be able to engage in transparent and informed public debate, it also requires political and social structures that prioritize and guarantee access to knowledge, community media, and mass media. If the communication processes in society are weak or non-existent, the capacity for inclusive and equitable sharing of knowledge and experience, and for vital democratic participation in political, economic, and cultural decision-making, is diminished with enormous consequences for social change. The theory and practice of communication rights and the theory and practice of communication for social change are, in my opinion, symbiotic.
Communication Rights are Human Rights
Communication is recognized as an essential human need and, therefore, as a basic human right (Traber, 1999). Without it, no individual or community can exist, or prosper. Communication enables meanings to be exchanged, makes people who and what they are, and motivates them to act. Communication strengthens human dignity and validates human equality. Recognition, implementation, and protection of communication rights recognize, implement and protect all other human rights (Girard and Ó Siochrú, 2003; Lee, 2004). Communication rights strengthen the capacity of people and communities to use communication and media to pursue their goals in the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres. They support key human rights that collectively enhance people’s capacity to communicate in their own general interest and for the common good. Communication rights go beyond freedom of opinion and expression to include areas such as democratic media governance, participation in one’s own culture, linguistic rights, and the right to education, privacy, peaceful assembly, and self-determination. These are questions of inclusion and exclusion, of equality and accessibility. In short, they are questions of human dignity.
One of the pillars of communication rights is the communication and exchange of knowledge (CRIS Campaign, 2005), which are essential to addressing issues related to poverty, health, medicine, education, politics, new technologies, and environmental questions. Policies in these sectors are complex but, from the perspective of genuine development, the recognition and implementation of communication rights are crucial. Even so, those who advocate communication rights still face an uphill struggle in convincing individuals, the private sector, governmental, and non-governmental agencies of their relevance to the development arena. Increasing public awareness and generating wider public debate about communication rights are important steps towards overcoming this inertia and gaining momentum for social development. However, access to knowledge is only part of the picture. In a recent report, UNDP’s Oslo Governance Centre states categorically that recognizing the link between human rights and social development matters, that the human rights framework is an important tool in ensuring that goals are pursued in an equitable, just, and sustainable manner (UNDP, 2007). Human rights also provide a normative framework that grounds development work in a universal set of values.
The same can be said of the relationship between human rights and communication rights: With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international community recognized the inherent dignity of all members of the human family by providing everyone with equal and inalienable rights. Communication rights are intrinsically bound up with the human condition and are based on a new, more powerful understanding of the implications of human rights and the role of communications. Without communication rights, human beings cannot live in freedom, justice, peace, and dignity (World Forum on Communication Rights, 2003, paragraph 7). This statement strongly affirms that people have the right to be consulted and to have a say in the decisions that affect them. Effective implementation of the principles of inclusion and participation becomes a vital component of drawing up policies that aim at genuine socialization by means of overcoming social exclusion. The principles underlying communication rights determine who participates (inclusion or exclusion) and which “voices” are listened to when decisions are made. This is a sine qua non, since “the core of all human rights standards is that their normative implications pertain to everyone.
The protection of a right to communicate requires concrete measures for the inclusion of all people” (Hamelink, forthcoming). The concept of communication rights, with its emphasis on justice, equality, participation, and accessibility, resonates profoundly with the theory of “communicative action” put forward by philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas. In brief, communicative action asserts that systematic discussion can reveal universal truths and codes of appropriate conduct that enable everyone involved to reach agreements from which they can benefit equally (Habermas, 1987; 1992). Communicative action depends on the capacity of everyone to dialogue and to understand or temporarily adopt each other’s individual perspectives and, from that starting point, to develop actions that have just consequences for everyone. Mutual understanding, not merely reciprocal influence, and certainly not, one-sided coercion, is key. As Habermas is at pains to point out, The rationality potential in action oriented to mutual understanding can be released and translated into the rationalization of the lifeworlds of social groups to the extent that language fulfils functions of reaching understanding, coordinating actions, and socializing individuals; it thereby becomes a medium through which cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization take place (Habermas, 1987: 86).
Among other things, communicative action tries to resolve the problem of universal truths that posit extending morality across all cultures despite differing cultural values and belief systems – a controversial idea that is the subject of intense debate, for example, in the field of communication ethics (Christians and Traber, 1997). Communicative action challenges the notion of relativism – that each culture or community has belief systems that cannot subscribe to universal principles because of cultural practices and experiences. It contests this idea with the foundational assertion that reason is a universal capacity inherent in all human beings. Implementing communicative action would ideally create a globally just society in which all members adhere to a shared principle – the ethic of reciprocity or “golden rule” – that is found, and has persisted, in many religious and ethical traditions of humankind for thousands of years: “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others.” Or in positive terms: “What you wish done to yourself, do to others!” This should be the irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life, for families and communities, for races, nations, and religions (Declaration Toward a Global Ethic, 1993: 7). Implicit in communicative action is a process of reconciliation with “those whose freedom has been taken away” that is based on the core values of genuine communication: “truth-telling, commitment to justice, freedom in solidarity, and respect for human dignity” (Traber, 1997: 335, 341). That process of reconciliation can only begin in a context of mutual trust in a shared reality: “Reconciliation requires seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We cannot make compassion dependent on a transformation to the ideal; we must begin with reality if we want to have any hope of influencing reality” (Sivaraksa, 2001: 41).
A Theological Approach to Communication Rights
Does any of the foregoing suggest a paradigm for a theology of communication rights? The parable of the Good Samaritan provides additional clues. There was a man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and was waylaid by robbers, who stripped him and beat him and made off, leaving him half dead. Now a priest happened to be taking that road and seeing him there gave him a wide berth. It was the same with a Levite who came to the place and seeing him gave him a wide berth. But a travelling Samaritan came upon him, and moved to pity at seeing him, approached him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then laying him across his own beast he conveyed him to a hostelry and took care of him. When departing on the morrow he gave two dinars to the host with the injunction, “Take care of him well, and I will reimburse you for any additional expense on my return journey.” Which of these three, do you think, acted as neighbor to the man waylaid by robbers? (Luke’s Version of the Good News of Jesus Christ, 10:25–29 in The Original New Testament, 1985: 159–60). Much can be (and has been) said about this parable of Jesus. To begin with, the man waylaid by robbers is anonymous. We do not know his name, or his appearance, or his class. He has no clothes that might help identify him and he is “half dead,” presumably unconscious. The man cannot speak; he is voiceless. We know that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho is some 17 miles long and descends some 3,000 feet. Schonfield, translator and editor of The Original New Testament, comments that, “Travelers were very liable to be attacked in the wild and precipitous country through which the Jerusalem-Jericho road passed” (1985: 159). One might wonder what prompted the man to travel alone, what urgency compelled him to risk his life. He is apparently one of the “disposable people.”
The parable deals with a first-hand experience common then and can still be experienced today. Who has not seen someone lying in the street, possibly in need of help? The priest actually sees the man lying by the side of the road and crosses over to avoid him. He does not attempt to ascertain if he is alive or if he is a Jew or not. The priest risks ritual defilement if he approaches closer than four cubits and restoring ritual purity was time consuming and costly. He chooses, therefore, to ignore – to invisibilize some might say – the victim of violence. The Levite also chooses to pass by on the other side of the road. Levites assisted priests in the temple and who knows but that this Levite was hurrying to catch up with the priest? Perhaps he saw the priest avoid the man and thought, “If the priest can do that, so can I.” In other words, “It’s not my responsibility.” The person who stops is the outsider, a descendant of that mixed race of the Jews of captivity and the Samaritan people of the land they were captive in. The relationship between Jews and Samaritans was one of hostility because of past schisms. Yet the Samaritan, who is clearly well off, is “moved to pity” and takes it upon himself to assist the man. He pours oil and wine on the wounds – an act customarily done by the priest before the high altar in the temple. The Samaritan takes him to a place where he will be cared for and pays all the expenses. He is going to return that way a few days later, so he tells the man running the hostelry not to spare any expense. The Samaritan does not know whom he has helped; nor does he have any expectation of being rewarded. While this parable is well known for its social implications in our modern world, it also offers an important contextual message. The priest and the Levite in the parable represent all those who are spiritually sick, those who have a duty to help and do nothing. Jesus’ unspoken challenge seems to be: are we to help only if it is convenient, or are we willing to go out of our way to show compassion to a stranger? The paradox is one of neighborliness, both who is my neighbor, and who is capable of acting in a neighborly way.
A further layer of interpretation emphasizes the perspective of the lawyer who asks, “Teacher, what am I to do to inherit Eternal Life?” (Lk. 10:25). Jesus answers with the standard of loving the Lord your God “with your whole heart, and your whole soul, with your whole strength, and with your whole mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says, “Do that, and you will live.” The key lies in Lk. 10:29 where the lawyer wants to justify himself by claiming he has already accomplished what is required. He wants a definition of neighbor that is not too challenging. By telling the parable, Jesus provides an answer that deliberately sets the standard high. Your neighbor includes the person you think of as the most alien or undesirable. And this conclusion applies to all people. One can only imagine the despair of the lawyer as Jesus says, “Go then, and act in the same way. The exercise is one of reimagining or rethinking the world from the most alien or undesirable perspective one can think of: the poor, the downtrodden, the repressed, the marginalized, since often they are too injured, too frightened, or simply unable to speak for themselves. That is why: “Those who try to use the example of Jesus have to learn to look at people differently, to practice imaginative compassion, to see the world as it might be and not simply accept it as it is. Seeing it that way round is to see it the way he saw it; and if enough of us start seeing it that way, why it might even come to pass” (Holloway, 2001: 230–31). The Pastoral Instruction Communio et progressio (Vatican, 1971) is credited with recognizing that “communication is not an extraneous concept co-opted by theology…the Christian message with its central tenets and contents of faith is itself expressed in terms of communication” (Kienzler, 1994: 94). The Instruction was issued only two years after Jean d’Arcy put forward the concept of a right to communicate (D’Arcy, 1969), so the absence of concrete references to that concept is not surprising. However, Communio et progressio does underline the need for “freedom to express ideas and attitudes” and it goes on to state: Modern man cannot do without information that is full, consistent, accurate and true. Without it, he cannot understand the perpetually changing world in which he lives nor be able to adapt himself to the real situation. This adaptation calls for frequent decisions that should be made with a full knowledge of events. Only in this way can he assume a responsible and active role in his community and be a part of its economic, political, cultural, and religious life. With the right to be informed goes the duty to seek information. Information does not simply occur; it must be sought. On the other hand, to get it, the man who wants information must have access to the varied means of social communication. In this way he can freely choose whatever means best suit his needs both personal and social.
It is futile to talk about the right to information if a variety of the sources for it are not made available (Communio et progressio, 34). In 1986 the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), an international, church-related, non-governmental organization working for social justice, developed its Christian Principles of Communication, which affirm that communication is a basic human right that defines people’s common humanity, strengthens cultures, enables participation, creates community, and challenges tyranny and oppression.
Specifically, communication is considered an individual and social necessity of such fundamental importance that it is seen as a universal human right: “Communication as a human right encompasses the traditional freedoms: of expression, of the right to seek, receive and impart information. But it adds to these freedoms, both for individuals and society, a new concept, namely that of access, participation, and two-way flow. Lee, Toward a Theology of Communication Rights 203. The Pastoral Instruction Aetatis novae (Vatican, 1992) goes even further, stating categorically that: “It is not acceptable that the exercise of the freedom of communication should depend upon wealth, education, or political power. The right to communicate is the right of all” (Aetatis novae, 15).
Conclusion
In today’s “global village” – a term coined by Wyndham Lewis in America and Cosmic Man (1948) and made famous by Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) – people’s lives can be immeasurably improved by communication that liberates, enables people to articulate their own needs, and helps them to act together to meet those needs. And in today’s “information societies,” it might be thought that everyone has access to the communication that enables and empowers people. Paradoxically, that is not the case. Information and knowledge gaps exist, especially in the global South. The “digital divide” is a reality. And, while our age is more aware of horror, violence, and tragedy than any previous age, the mass media provide (limited) information, not knowledge. What we read in newspapers and see on television screens, mediated, and distanced as it is, tends to anesthetize us against compassion. Despite a deluge of information, we are not sufficiently in the world to feel morally guilty about it. We are spectators, indifferently consuming reports and images, lacking solidarity with our neighbors, spiritually damaged in the same way as are the priest, the Levite, and all those who pass by on the other side of the road. Nevertheless: Perhaps something can be done if we all accept and practice the humanity, the indivisibility in plurality, of one another. Then we might care for human beings as such; we might demonstrate a certain solidarity with those whom we feel to be distant otherwise, and accord to each person a due measure of the dignity they deserve. That would involve solidarity with the aspiration and need of others to secure the resources of dignity.
It would also involve the condemnation of any institutional policies or economic practices which deny access to, or the provision of, the security of those resources of dignity or which allow a surfeit to be allocated to specific groups at the expense of others (Tester, 1997: 151). The communication rights movement endorses the principle that open and participatory communication underlies all successful attempts to change societies, their attitudes and behavior. It leads to better, more transparent, and accountable governance, the creation of a vibrant and dynamic civil society, and to rapid and more equitable economic growth. Effective communication takes place in a process that engages people and enters into dialogue with them. Governmental and nongovernmental organizations and all concerned with social development and justice need to recognize and strengthen the central role played by information, knowledge, and communication – especially the urgency of enhancing the capacities of poor and marginalized people to participate directly in political and development processes. What we need is a theology of communication rights which, allied to a preferential option for the poor, responds to the question posed frequently by Dom Helder Câmara, champion of Brazil’s downtrodden: “When shall we have the courage to outgrow the charity mentality and see that at the bottom of all relations between rich and poor there is a problem of justice?” Liberation theology, with its roots in the suffering and oppression of Latin America, long ago rediscovered the centrality of the poor to the theology of the Kingdom. And in the spirit of asking “What is meant by my ‘neighbor’?,” we might also ask, “What is meant by the poor?” Jon Sobrino has the answer: The poor are those who can never take it for granted that they will be alive from one moment to the next… The poor are those who have (almost) all the powers of this world against them. They present us with a dialectical dimension. By their very existence, they make us answer the question: “Am I for them, or am I against them?” The poor are those who do not have names. They are the eight hundred thousand people of Kibera, crowded together with practically no latrines…
The poor are those who do not have a calendar. Nobody knows what 10/7 is although everyone knows what 9/11 is. 10/7 is the 7th of October, the day on which the democracies bombed Afghanistan as a response to 9/11. Without a name and without a calendar, the poor do not have an existence. They simply are not. They ask us a question: What words do we say, or not say, about them so that they may be? But the poor exist. In them a great mystery shines forth: their “primordial holiness.” With fear and trembling I have written “outside the poor, there is no salvation.” They bring salvation (Sobrino, 2007: 307). The poor are the increasingly desperate slaves of this world. In christological terms, they are human beings made in the likeness of God, comprising communities, families, parents and children. If globalization, with all its contradictions and inherent problems, is to have moral validity, it must bring with it an enhanced sense of globalized humanity. We are a global people. As such, we must ask if we are willing to live in a world with slaves. If not, we are obliged by our very humanity to take responsibility for the world’s failings.
Unless we work to understand the structures and inadequacies that enable slavery and oppression to persist, and unless we take action to change them (“What am I to do to inherit Eternal Life?”), we are complicit with injustice. The words of Martin Luther King serve as a warning: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring (King, 1967: 9). Communicators have a significant role to play in that restructuring and in helping to empower people and communities.
Accessing and distributing relevant information, knowledge and tools will increase people’s capacity to achieve development goals, strengthen networking, and enhance the cross-fertilization that comes from multiple sources of information and knowledge. In particular, communicators can provide increased space for, and attention to, the voices, perspectives and contributions of those most affected by poverty and other development issues; give higher priority to knowledge and information generated within communities and countries that bear the heaviest burden of poverty; improve understandings of the world’s cultural diversity and the many ways in which problems are addressed and solved; significantly expand public debate and dialogue on the issues that are a priority in international, national and local contexts; and advocate more open, participatory and inclusive processes of policy development that emphasize the views and perspectives of those most affected by poverty and the absence of social justice.
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