EVERYBODY is a media critic these days:
Pope Benedict XVI has called on the media to underpin its work with ethical considerations and do more to promote the “dignity of the human being”.
The pontiff said there was a need for what he called “info-ethics” – as much as bio-ethics in the fields of medicine and biological research.
He said the media was often used to promote vulgarity and violence and to legitimise “distorted models of life”.
So he’s following the stories about Britney Spears, too..
But he also said the media helped to spread democracy and promote dialogue.
This isn’t the first time the Vatican has put its two-cents in on the news media. According this BBC report, It has often accused the media of promoting consumerism (by the way, make sure you patronize TMV’s advertisers) and “lifestyles that it considers unethical, such as pre-marital sex and homosexuality.”
But there is something that sets this message apart from others. Here are his words:
In his three-page message, the pontiff said: “When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society’s control, it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human being.”
He continued: “While claiming to represent reality, it can tend to legitimise or impose distorted models of personal, family or social life.
“Moreover, in order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences, it does not hesitate at times to have recourse to vulgarity and violence, and to overstep the mark.”
What sets this message apart from messages in past years is the CONTEXT.
What’s different is the growing influence of the media not just in one country, but all around the world due to the solidification of cable news networks. Although newspapers in the United States are greatly ailing (at best downsizing, at worst on life support at the beginning of this century). they’re healthier in many other countries. Televisions are found in what were once remote villages throughout the world. In the U.S. airports, some McDonalds’, banks, and airports — cable news. Many airplanes offer satellite television.
The media is so lucrative (movies, TV, newspapers, magazines — but not yet most weblogs) that competition is fierce — competition to grab and audiences’ attention and keep it for advertisers.
The continuing popularity of movies globally, the growth of cable news, the continued existence of a vigorous print press in many countries — and the internet which allows videos and websites — all mean that an unintentional international conventional wisdom develops via the media over what is acceptable and what is inappropriate, what is considered ordinary and what is considered unusual. The line at what is inappropriate and over line now shrinks each year.
The Internet age has sped up this process and removed even more taboos: what you cannot see in the news media, you can see on the Internet and often for free.
And how does this impact the press? Talent bookers, producers, editors and reporters are all influenced by the images and information they see and hear. Old conventional wisdoms can vanish quickly. And the trending? So far, it isn’t going in the Pope’s direction. Competition is more fierce than ever and the emphasis is often seemingly less on giving the public what they should and need to know then what they want to know.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.