4 innocence. Article 11 of the Convention alludes to the right to have one’s honor respected and one’s dignity recognized. The potential is there for a collision of protected rights, a collision that has particular connotations when it is freedom of expression exercised through the mass media, with the enormous impact they (the media) have, the power they represent and the effect that they can have, for that very reason, on the lives of persons, their integrity and the preservation of their legally protected interests. When such a collision cannot be averted, an authority must intervene to correct the inequity, demand accountability and impose the measures that follow from the responsibility incurred. This is where the “necessity” comes into play. Identifying the interests that need to be protected, weighing their importance in the democratic scheme of things and selecting the proper means to protect them are not always a simple matter. 12. In the case brought to the Inter-American Court’s attention, resulting from the publication of certain articles in “La Nación” newspaper in Costa Rica, written by journalist Mauricio Herrera Ulloa, it was argued that criminal sanctions had to be considered as a means to punish what was alleged to be unlawful conduct in the practice of journalism, conduct that, it was claimed, caused harm to private persons. From the beginning, this position necessitates an examination of the crimes alleged and how they were interpreted in trial. This examination raises the problem of malice in general, and the specific malice that must be present when crimes against honor are involved. It also raises the matter of the exceptio veritatis as a possible grounds for preclusion of punishment –either because the conduct did not fit the crime, or because of justification or lack of culpability, depending on how that possibility is dealt with in the positive law systems and the position that the doctrine takes on the subject. Then, too, all this raises questions concerning the so-called presumption of innocence, or to be more rigorous, the principle of innocence that governs and tempers the treatment of the accused under criminal law and procedural law. 13. Seen from this perspective, the following must be said: a) that in order to be classified as a punishable offense for the improper exercise of freedom of expression, the following must be present: specific malice to discredit a person’s reputation, to damage his good name or prestige, to cause harm to the passive subject, and to not to confine oneself to predicting and suggesting a certain outcome; b) in democratic systems, criminal law rightly lays the burden of proof on the party making the accusation, not the party who, as the accused, denies the charge based on the principle of presumption of innocence; c) that if the principle of exceptio veritatis is statute, then it ought not to reverse the burden of proof which would confound the evidentiary consequences of that principle; and d) that the practice of the journalism profession involves rights and duties vis-à-vis information –among them certain obligations of prudence and care, as is true of any profession. The practice of journalism is provided for and protected by the law, inasmuch as journalism is a social interest that the State protects; there may, therefore, be a premise for preclusion of crime on the grounds that the conduct is permissible if it meets the conditions set forth in the law regulating this preclusion, conditions similar or identical to those required in the case of other grounds for justification. Of course, the boundaries of the duty to be cautious must be established thoughtfully. The fact that the duty exists does not mean that the obligatory caution needs to exceed the boundaries of what is reasonable. Otherwise, journalists would feel overly inhibited and silence would take the place of the free flow of ideas.