Jacek Sobczak, Maria Gołda-Sobczak

Amendment to the Rights and Obligations of a Journalist in Act: Press Law from the Perspective of Conscience Clause

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Abstract The conscience clause, sometimes also referred to as the right to conscientious objection, is based on the possibility of refusing to comply with a binding legal norm due to its non-conformity with the indications of conscience of the person who invokes its content. Commonly derived, especially in Poland, from Article 53 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, this clause initially applied to physicians’ actions. It was also suggested that this clause could form the basis for conscientious objection to an abortion procedure. Drawing on Article 10(2) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and emphasising the differences in the wording of this provision in different language versions, the article argues that such interpretation of the conscience clause is too narrow and poor. Attention is drawn to the amendments made to the wording of Article 10(2) of the Press Law, where the legislator replaced the journalist’s obligation to follow the editorial policy with the right to refuse to carry out an official order if the journalist believed that they were expected to publish a material that would violate the principles of reliability, objectivity and professional diligence. This solution undoubtedly constitutes the approval of the broadly understood conscience clause explicitly formulated in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The content of Article 10(2) of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights allows for conscientious objection to apply to actions of the representatives across all professions.

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