7 have been aired by other mass media, by news agencies, public authorities or private persons with authoritative knowledge of the facts, provided the publication always indicates the source being cited” (paragraph 2); or the situation when an “unfavorable opinion is expressed in discharging a duty or exercising a right, provided that the modus operandi or the lack of discretion, when discretion was in order, do not establish the presence of an intent to offend” (paragraph 4). 4. Protection of honor. Public interest and status as a public official 22. Given the particulars of the instant case, the Court‘s judgment has addressed some aspects of the conflict between freedom of expression, exercised in journalism for purposes of reporting, and the right to a good name, to dignity, honor, privacy of the person alluded to in the press report. In the instant case, a distinction has been drawn between the situation of a public official and that of the ordinary citizen who is not performing any function by mandate of or on behalf of the State. 23. Among the central purposes of the information required by citizens and provided by the mass media is one that concerns “res populi”, understood in a broad, contemporary and “realist” sense to mean that “everyone can know that which of interest to everyone.” There is a legitimate interest in knowing what is of interest to society as a whole, what impacts the functioning of the State, what affects general interests or rights, and what has important consequences for the community: all that engenders a legitimate use of freedom of expression for informative purposes. The business of government –and more broadly the activities of the State through its various organs- are not inconsequential to the everyday citizen and knowledge of the business of government should not be beyond the reach of that everyday citizen. Democracy is built upon a duly informed public, which steers its way of thinking and makes its decisions on the basis of that information. Information about the business of government should be much more readily available than strictly private information about an individual’s personal or private life that does not cross over those strict boundaries. Indeed, the business of government is one of the natural domains for so-called “transparency.” 24. In today’s complex, heterogeneous, developed society, which operates under the influence of a variety of social, political and economic agents, that public “zone of interest” is not confined to what might be formally classified as “state,” “governmental,” or “official.” It extends far beyond that, as far as the public interest demands. The situation and decisions of private persons are not affected just by the formal acts of the State: other agents can exert a powerful and even decisive influence on the lives of private individuals. We cannot disregard another sensitive and important aspect here: the distortions that the information can contain and the abuses of power –formal and informal- that can be concealed through the dissemination of news and the expression of thought. 25. It has never been asserted that public officials, because they are public officials, lose the right that all persons have to protection of their honor, good name, reputation, personal and private life. However, the life of a public official – understood in the broad sense- does not have the clear boundaries, if any boundaries at all, that a private citizen has in his life. In the case of a public official it will not always be easy to distinguish between private acts and public acts; or between personal acts that are of no public importance, relevance or interest, and the personal acts that are of public importance, relevance or interest. The difficulty