Vatican City, Sep 29, 2017 / 06:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With social platforms increasingly targeting so-called “fake news,” Pope Francis has decided to weigh-in, dedicating his message for the 2018 World Day of Social Communications to eliminating the spread of false information and providing the truth.
Announced Sept. 29, the theme for the 2018 message is: “The truth will set you free: Fake news and journalism for peace.”
In a communique from the Vatican Secretariat of Communications, headed by Msgr. Dario Eduardo Vigano, it was said the Pope’s message will be centered on “so-called ‘fake news,’” which is namely “baseless information that contributes to generating and nurturing a strong polarization of opinions.”
Fake news, the communique read, “involves an often misleading distortion of facts, with possible repercussions at the level of individual and collective behavior.”
Since the big players among social media companies, global institutions and even politics are now confronting the issue, “the Church too wishes to offer a contribution.”
To this end, the Church wishes to put forward “a reflection on the causes, the logic and the consequences of disinformation in the media.” Her goal is also to help in promoting “professional journalism, which always seeks the truth, and therefore a journalism of peace that promotes understanding between people.”
World Day of Social Communications was established in 1963 with the document “Inter Mirifica” on the media of social communications, and was the only global celebration to be requested by the Second Vatican Council.
The event is celebrated in countries throughout the world on the Sunday after Pentecost, which this year falls on May 13, 2018. The Pope’s message for the event is typically published on the Jan. 24 feast of Saint Francis de Sales, patron of journalists.
Pope Francis has often spoken out on journalism and the need to provide accurate, constructive reporting that doesn’t degrade or defame others.
Journalists were the focus of Pope Francis’ prayer intention for October 2016. In a video released announcing the intention, the Pope said “We need information leading to a commitment for the common good of humanity and the planet.”
Specifically, he prayed that journalists, “in carrying out their work, may always be motivated by respect for the truth and a strong sense of ethics.”
Just two months later, in December 2016, the Pope gave an interview to a Belgian magazine in which he cautioned media to avoid several major temptations, including the desire to always focus on scandal – which he compared to “coprophilia,” a mental illness in which a person has an abnormal interest in feces.
“Media I think have to be very clean, very clean and very transparent. And not fall – without offending, please – into the sickness of coprophilia,” the Pope said in the interview.
Coprophilia, or coprophagy, is technically defined as a condition in which a person has an abnormal interest and pleasure in feces or excrement. However, for Pope Francis, his use of the word referred to an attitude in journalism that always tries to communicate scandal.
However, he said media are also “the builders of a society,” and as such are meant to foster a fraternal exchange of ideas, to educate and to make one think. Media is not inherently evil, he said, but cautioned that we are all sinners, and even media “have their temptations.”
First of all, they can be tempted to slander or defile people, above all in politics, he said, and also warned against defamation, since “every person has the right to a good name.”
To bring to light a problem from a person’s distant past and to hold them responsible, even if they have already rectified the situation, “is serious, it does damage, it nullifies a person,” Francis said.
“There is no right to this. This is a sin and it does harm,” he said, pointing to another particularly harmful attitude in the media: “misinformation.”
Described by the Pope as telling only one part of the truth but not the other, Francis said that to do this: “This is to misinform. Because you, the viewer, you give them half of the truth. And therefore they cannot make a serious judgment on the complete truth.”
Misinforming people “is probably the greatest harm that media can do. Because it directs opinion in one direction, taking away the other half of the truth,” he said, adding that if media stay away from these problematic attitudes, “they are builders of opinion and they can edify, and do an immense, immense good.”
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So they are meeting on a problem that currently has good stats but not meeting on the presence of active gays in the clergy like the orgy incident in Rome and the two priests caught in a sexual act in Miami with each other last week and the male prostitute in the Milan area two months ago who avers having had sinful contact with 36 priests. But the meeting is about the largely gay area that is currently quiet…abuse of minors. Well that sounds like we don’t need consultancy help.
Does anybody have any information about what is happening to Cardinal Pell? There’s been blank silence for quite some time, and considering that there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that he is being railroaded, I’m concerned.
I wish I could help you out there Leslie. It seems that for some reason things have stalled. As far as I know though: the trial is still going ahead. I have heard him speak a few times and met him once. I have always had grave fears as to there being a fair trial. He said himself once that he doesn’t go making things up. He simply upholds what the Church teaches, come fair weather or foul. There are those who hate him for it.
Stephen in Australia.
I should have mentioned. There is an Australian journal of conservative opinion. The name of it is Quadrant. When in a newsagents; I was amazed to see an essay in it, written very recently by Cardinal Pell. The essay is titled – The Church in a Post Christian World. It is dated: September 12Th 2018. Search Quadrant and you will be able to see it. However, unless you subscribe, you won’t be able to read it in full just yet. The whole matter is of great concern. Hope this has been some help.
Stephen.
39 mnutes ago..ny times…Di Nardo, president of Bishops facing accusation of transferring molestor…..
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/12/us/ap-us-clergy-abuse-dinardo.html
Bergoglio’s synod on “the protection of minors” is a sham. As we all know, the problem is not pedophilia but massive homosexuality among 50% to 70% of all priests and the priest-bishop-Cardinal homosexual networks that are strangling the Church. Still less does the Church need another synod to talk rather than to act. Again, as everyone should know, it was Bergoglio who unilaterally destroyed the bishop sexual abuse investigation-and-trial proceeding that his own sexual abuse commission had strongly recommended. Since Bergoglio has doubled down on his delay-deflect-and-deny strategy with this cynical synod announcement, it is time for the DOJ and the Attorney-Generals in all 50 states to treat him and the American PervChurch for what they are: criminals and moral degenerates.
Paul, I don’t doubt that there are men who are priests and who are gay. There are a few I’ve met that I suspect lean that way. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are faithful to their vow of chastity. You claim that 50 – 70% of priests are gay. From where do you get that statistic? I’ve been around priests all my life. My closest friend is a priest. I know he’s not gay and neither are the men I’ve known who are priests. Please tell me from where you get this statistic.
It might come from this much discussed and cited 2003 essay by Fr. Paul Mankowski, in which he states: “I would estimate that between 50 and 60 percent of the men who entered religious life with me in the mid-70s were homosexuals who had no particular interest in the Church, but who were using the celibacy requirement of the priesthood as a way of camouflaging the real reason for the fact that they would never marry.” Or perhaps from Sipes.
I think you are quite correct. The Bishop’s Conferences have no canonical authority at all. This is like a high school principal asking the Student Council to address the problem of incompetent teachers. Except that it doesn’t sound so obviously stupid.