42 and opinions,” because “[b]oth the access of the media outlets owned by those requesting access to the frequencies and society’s right to receive a plurality of information pursuant to Article 13 of the American Convention depend on this decision.” It also indicated that “on allocating frequencies, the State decides which voice the public will be able to hear in the years to come.” Consequently, the Commission indicated that “the process of allocating and renewing concessions must be strictly regulated by law, characterized by transparency and guided by standards that are objective, impartial, clear, public, and compatible with a democratic society,” which would mean that “the procedure for awarding a license must be surrounded by sufficient guarantees against arbitrariness, including the obligation to provide justification for a decision granting or denying the request, as well as to provide adequate judicial oversight of the decision.” 118. The Commission also argued that, “these days, a significant amount of journalism is done via media outlets. These media outlets are, in effect, associations of persons who have come together to exercise their freedom of expression in a sustained manner.” Thus, the Commission considered that, “the role of the alleged victims within the media outlet must be analyzed in order to determine whether the State action that affected the media outlet as a legal person also, by extension, had a negative, certain, and substantial impact on the freedom of expression of natural persons.” In this case, the Commission indicated that the presumed victims were three shareholders and members of the Board of Directors of RCTV (Marcel Granier, Peter Bottome and Jaime Nestares), who exercised permanent and real control over RCTV, and also 14 professionals who were working for the channel, “all with significant levels of responsibility [and] who contributed directly to the communications mission of RCTV.” 119. The Commission argued that “once an interference with the right to freedom of expression has been established, it is the State that carries the burden of proving that this interference was permissible; that is, that the restriction on freedom of expression was established by law and necessary to ensure a legitimate purpose.” In this regard, it indicated that “the promotion of diversity and pluralism is a legitimate public interest which can justify decisions in the area of broadcasting.” It added that “the granting of radio and television broadcast frequencies with the objective of putting pressure on and punishing or rewarding and providing privileges to social communicators and media outlets because of the information they provide constitutes an indirect restriction of freedom of expression as prohibited by Article 13(3) of the American Convention[; this] also has the effect of silencing other media outlets, which severely impacts the social dimension of freedom of expression.” 120. Regarding the State’s alleged procedural obligations, the Commission argued that “the dispute over the non-renewal of RCTV's concession took place in the context of legal uncertainty for the station as a result of the lack of clarity regarding the legal framework applicable to its concession.” This was due to the fact that “the State did not rule on the request [for transformation of its concession] within the two-year period established in the LOTEL, and the request was still unresolved when RCTV formally requested the renewal of its concession in January of 2007[;] while, CONATEL continually and quietly applied the new LOTEL legal regime to RCTV.” In this regard, the Commission considered that “that its task in this case [was] not to determine which domestic law should have been applied and what was the correct interpretation of it[, because it was] enough to observe that RCTV had, as a minimum, the right to a clear and objective proceeding strictly regulated by law.” And, it added that “[g]iven the State's failure to comply with the legal mandate to transform RCTV's concession, a situation of lack of legal certainty existed that was inconsistent with the Venezuelan State’s obligation to establish a procedure for renewing concessions that was strictly regulated by law.” 121. The Commission indicated that the decision not to renew the concession was taken based on the channel’s editorial line, in light of the statements made by senior officials,