The world has become a global marketplace for goods, ideas and news. Under inhumane conditions, women in Asia produce cheap shirts for department stores in the West. Billions of people are without clean water and sufficient food. More and more people in the Southern Hemisphere want to migrate to the USA or Western Europe. Chinese investors are securing jobs in the USA. IT workers in India are solving software problems for European companies. Fishers in Bangladesh call for market prices via mobile phone. Opponents of the Iranian government organize protests using text messages.

The curse and blessing of globalization represent two sides of the same coin. Globalization offers great opportunities to generate more universal observance of human rights, but it also poses serious dangers to the fundamental rights of the individual. National and international organizations are demanding more and more that people, their needs and their rights be placed at the center of the discussion – as it is postulated by the Human Rights Convention of the United Nations.

The world has become more complex – even experts are finding it hard to comprehend how everything interacts. This is where the media has an important role: to explain and create transparency and public awareness. At the same time, journalists, publishers, broadcasters and Internet providers are themselves major players in globalization, subject to economic, political and cultural imperatives.