The Vatican has criticised the "indefensible selectivity" in media reporting of certain instances of human suffering while others are ignored.
In the document, Ethics Communications, published yesterday on Jubilee Day for Journalists, the Council for Social Communications warns media commentators that "faced with grave injustices, it is not enough for communicators simply to say their job is to report things as they are".
It further warns against the media being used "to build and sustain economic systems that serve acquisitiveness and greed". Neoliberalism is a case in point.
The document also criticises the use of "spin" in the media by politicians to try and distort the truth, and the increasing "superficiality and bad taste" of certain media sectors.
The document notes a perceived media tendency to treat religion "with incomprehension, even contempt, as an object of curiosity that does not merit serious attention".
On the other hand, it points out the temptation for those on the side of religion to take "an exclusively judgmental and negative view of media . . . . presenting religious messages in an emotional, manipulative style . . . using media as instruments for control and domination: practising unnecessary secrecy and otherwise offending against truth."
The document begins by noting the "great good and great evil" that can come of using the media. The choices as to which route it takes "are made not only by those who receive communications but especially by those who control the instruments of social communication and determine their structure, policies and content".
The church wishes to support those professionally involved in communications "by setting out positive principles to assist them in their work". It brings "a long tradition of moral wisdom" to the role and "her vision of the dignity of the human person".
The document says many in the media are "troubled by the growing economic and ideological pressures to lower ethical standards".
Referring to the pastoral Communio et Progressio, it notes that the media are called to serve human dignity by helping people live well and function as persons in the community. It notes the economic, political, cultural, educational and religious benefits of the media.
Without the media, "crucial economic structures would collapse", it says. The media are "indispensable" in democratic societies, but can also be used "to block community and injure the integral good of persons".
Criticising neoliberalism and the associated "purely economic conception of man", which considers profit and the market as its only parameters, the document says this is "to the detriment of the dignity and the respect due to individuals and peoples".
The document decries the situation whereby, politically, the media are "often used for demagoguery and deception". Even in democracies, the document notes, it is common for politicians to manipulate public opinion through the media.
It also criticises the media tendency to "popularise the ethical relativism and utilitarianism that underlie today's culture of death."
The media "can also distract people and cause them to waste time", exposing them to "banal, trashy presentations", it says. Nor is it any excuse to say the media reflect popular standards, as they have "a serious duty to uplift, not degrade".
Internationally, "traditional cultural expressions are virtually excluded from access to popular media in some places and face extinction; meanwhile, the values of affluent, secularised societies increasingly supplant the traditional values of societies less wealthy and powerful", it says.
Communicators should take "a generous and inclusive approach to nations and regions where what the means of social communication do, or fail to do, bears a share of the blame for the perpetuation of evils like poverty, illiteracy, political repression and violations of human rights, intergroup and inter-religious conflicts, and the suppression of indigenous cultures".
It observes that when it comes to media reporting, "the presumption should always be in favour of freedom of expression." But free expression should also "always observe principles like truth, fairness, and respect for privacy".
Decisions about media content should not be left to market forces only, as this could not be "counted on to safeguard either the public interest, as a whole, or, especially, the legitimate interest of minorities".
For recipients, their first duty was to be "discerning and selective". They should inform themselves about the media and their operations. Catholics had the same rights of freedom of expression as everyone else, it notes. But no one had a right to speak for the church "unless properly designated: and personal opinions should not be presented as the church's teaching".
In conclusion, it says the Christian communicator has a vocation to speak out against the "false gods and idols of the day, materialism, hedonism, consumerism, narrow nationalism . . . holding up for all to see a body of moral truth based on human dignity and rights".
