Media freedom finds its rationale in the concept of public discourse for the general benefit of a democratic society rather than the individual autonomy of the speaker. Public discourse is based on the idea of a non-coercive debate aimed at reaching understanding, in which the authority of the better argument is the only authority. As a consequence, publications that do not aim at reaching understanding, but incite hatred, and are thus directed against fundamental values of a democratic society, such as human dignity, tolerance and peacefulness, enjoy very little protection under international human rights law.

Academic literature has coined the term ‘hate speech’ for such speech acts. However, a clear and generally accepted definition of what ‘hate speech’ actually is has not yet been found. The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe defined ‘hate speech’ as ‘covering all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify racial hatred, xenophobia, anti-Semitism or other forms of hatred based on intolerance, including: intolerance expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism, discrimination and hostility against minorities, migrants and people of immigrant origin.'similarly, the ECtHR referred to ‘all forms of expressions which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred based on intolerance (including religious intolerance)’. According to Anne Weber's ‘Manual on Hate Speech’, the concept of ‘hate speech’ encompasses a multiplicity of situations:

1. – firstly, incitement of racial hatred or in other words, hatred directed against persons or groups of persons on the grounds of belonging to a race;

2. – secondly, incitement to hatred on religious grounds, to which may be equated incitement to hatred on the basis of a distinction between believers and non-believers;

3. – and lastly, to use the wording of the Recommendation on ‘hate speech’ of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, incitement to other forms of hatred based on intolerance ‘expressed by aggressive nationalism and ethnocentrism’.