Local mass media actively contributes to promotion of human rights

Along with the development of the country, the mass media has made important contributions in sharing knowledge and promoting human rights in Vietnam.

It has become an important forum for people to raise their voices, participate in discovering the negative aspects of society and contribute positively to the country's renovation and development.

Vietnamese people are getting better and better access to modern information technology. According to the statistics of "wearesocial.net", Vietnamese ranks 9th in the world for the time to surf the Internet (3.1 hours per day spent on social networks) and 22nd in the world for the rate of people using social networks (31% of population).

In addition to spoken and printed newspapers, there are also electronic newspapers. At present, all departments, agencies, and organizations in Vietnam have their own websites.

From 258 newspapers and magazines in 1990, the country now has more than 700 print agencies, with 850 publications; 68 radio stations; one national news agency; 80 electronic newspapers; thousands of information websites; 55 publishers and 15,000 journalists.

The use of modern technology in creating, storing, transmitting, processing and exploiting information to provide to citizens, state agencies and social organizations conveniently, quickly, and less expensively than other forms of traditional press, bringing many benefits to society.

In order to propagandize, educate and promote human rights in Vietnam today, it is necessary to thoroughly use the internet and the mass media. The communication and education on human rights needs to be conducted regularly, continuously, proactively, comprehensively, and convincingly through real stories.

According to a research work entitled "Enhancing the role of media institutions in protecting human and civil rights in Vietnam”, only when officials, public servants and the people understand the Party's guidelines and policies and the laws of the State on human rights, they will know how to select information on social networking sites.

Thus, promoting propaganda and raising people's awareness on human rights will bring about positive effects, which is better than to prevent and control information on social networks.

By doing this, all people of all classes will understand the policies of the Party and the State, and hostile forces will not have the opportunity to propagate and distort the guidelines, policies and laws of the Party and the State in order to divide and reduce the people's confidence in the Party and the State.

The study also suggests that the media need to improve the credibility and reliability in order to win trust of the people.

To realize that goal, it is necessary to innovate the way of receiving, collecting and processing information on human rights, and raising the awareness and qualification of the journalists who write about human rights.

These people must be knowledgeable, deeply understand about human rights issues, the law, and then giving accurate information to the people.

Communication on human rights needs to arouse the sense of national pride among people, so that they can understand their basic rights and choose appropriate protection mechanisms.

Also, the provision of information on human rights needs to be reformed both in content and the ways of diffusing information. Regarding the content of information, it must be suitable and practical for each subject.

The content should focus on international human rights conventions; new provisions of the 2013 Constitution of Vietnam on human rights, basic rights and obligations of citizens; provisions on human and civil rights in relevant laws; the rights of the elderly, the rights of women, the rights of children; other related rights; and clarifying the position, role, duties and powers of state agencies in the protection of justice, the protection of human rights and citizens' rights.

In addition, the form of providing information needs to be diversified. The media agencies need to uphold the role and responsibility to actively and proactively coordinate with relevant agencies and units to effectively organize various types of information provision.

Hai Van