Avoid 'sins of the media,' Pope urges Italian TV personnel

December 15, 2014

Catholics in the media should have the “courage to speak directly, telling the turth and working to “preserve it from all that distors and twists it for other purposes.” That was the message of Pope Francis in a December 15 meeting with the personnel of the Italian Catholic television network TV2000.

The Pope urged media figures to resist “propaganda, ideologies, political ends” and all efforts to control the media for economic or political ends. He also cautioned against “fashions, clichés, pre-packaged formulas.”

In reporting on current events, the Pope continued, the media should avoid the twin dangers of providing too much irrelevant information—“saturating our perceptions with an excess of slogans that annul our thoughts instead of setting them into motion”—and oversimplifying stories to promote quick judgments.

Finally the Pope cautioned his audience to avoid “the sins of the media: disinformation, slander, and defamation.” Of these, he said, “the most insidious is disinformation,” which leads people to accept falsehoods or partial truths.

 

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Further information:

• To Catholic television workers: avoid the sins of the media (VIS)