This article considers the relationship of international law and the media through the prism of human rights. In the first section the international regulation of the media is examined and visions of good, bad, and new media emerge. In the second section, the enquiry is reversed and the article explores the ways in which the media is shaping international legal forms and processes in the field of human rights. This is termed the ‘mediatization of international law’. Yet despite hopes for new media and the Internet to transform international law, the theoretical work of Jodi Dean warns of the danger to democracy of commodification through the spread of ‘communicative capitalism’.