Fr. Roger J. Landry
\nThe Anchor
\nEditorial
\nFebruary 1, 2008<\/p>\n
In a December interview with Time<\/em> magazine, novelist Stephen King sought to persuade the magazine to name Lindsay Lohan or Brittney Spears its 2007 Person of the Year. The reporter, at first, thought King was being frivolous. He wasn\u2019t. He argued that, measured in terms of they attention have received not merely from the tabloids but from major national media sources, Mesdemoiselles Lohan and Spears have been far more influential figures than eventual winner Vladimir Putin \u2014 or General David Petraeus, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad most American political leaders, or any other serious candidates for the designation. Lohan and Spears, King noted, make more magazine covers and headlines, and receive far more google hits, than almost anyone in the country. Naming either of them a Person of the Year would elicit \u201ca scream from the American reading public\u201d and provoke a much-needed and long-overdue public conversation about the \u201cdifference between real news and fake news.\u201d<\/p>\n With razor-sharp precision, the horror author said that the media today is spawning a truly scary situation in which far more people know the contestants on American Idol<\/em> than they know their own congressmen. News outlets give more attention to Heath Ledger, Kanye West\u2019s mom, Drew Peterson\u2019s wife, Natalie Holloway\u2019s disappearance, and Tom Brady\u2019s ankle than they do to the crisis in Pakistan, the surge in Iraq, whether global warming is for real, and domestic economic or immigration woes. King says this switch, from a news culture focused on facts and the truth about the big issues of the day to one focused on entertainment and ratings, is simply not healthy.<\/p>\n Pope Benedict XVI agrees. Last Thursday, he published his message for World Communications Day,\u00a0 entitled, \u201cThe Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service.\u201d In it, he says that the media are undergoing a \u201cradical shift\u201d and even a \u201ccomplete change of role.\u201d One way we see this transformation \u2014 he notes in similarity to King\u2019s observations \u2014 occurs when the media panders to our lower instincts for the sake of ratings. \u201cIn order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences,\u201d some media sources do not hesitate \u201cto have recourse to vulgarity and violence and to overstep the mark.\u201d In doing so, they have become \u201cspokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism,\u201d which he calls \u201ctrue scourges of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n As serious as that metamorphosis is, Benedict says that there is an even more pernicious transformation that is happening in the media. Rather than trying to \u201crepresent reality,\u201d he says many media are now seeking to \u201cdetermine it, owing to the power and force of suggestion that it possesses.\u201d\u00a0 Instead of reporting on events, some are seeking to \u201ccreate\u201d them. This leads to a host of problems, as the instruments of social communication are increasingly \u201cexploited for indiscriminate \u2018self-promotion\u2019\u201d and are used to \u201cmanipulate consciences,\u201d subjecting recipients to \u201cagendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n In the context of the United States, we all have been exposed to this \u201cradical shift\u201d toward an agenda-driven manipulation of media outlets that the Pope is describing \u2014 and it has left many of us cynical. Those with liberal tendencies do not feel they can receive honest reporting on talk radio programs or on Fox News, and those with conservative orientations are suspicious of the vast majority of newspapers and television news programs. Many complain there is no longer a clear demarcation between fact and spin.\u00a0 News outlets have been accused \u2014 in some cases, justifiably \u2014 of \u201cpush reporting,\u201d where they seek to advance candidates or particular causes, or defeat others, not merely through the traditional way of persuasive editorials, but through biased news stories. \u00a0<\/p>\n In the face of this transformation, Benedict approvingly notes that \u201cmany people now think there is a need \u2026 for \u2018info-ethics,\u2019 just as we have bioethics in the filed of medicine and in scientific research linked to life.\u201d Such a code of media ethics would go beyond libel laws and penalties for plagiarism, but seek to protect the dignity of persons covered by the media, as well as the dignity of journalists, recipients of the information and journalism itself.<\/p>\n The media, Benedict says, are essential to human flourishing. \u201cThere is no denying the contribution they can make to the diffusion of news, to knowledge of facts and to the dissemination of information; they have played a decisive part \u2026 in the spread of literacy and in socialization, as well as the development of democracy and dialogue among peoples. Without their contribution, it would be truly difficult to foster and strengthen understanding between nations, to breathe life into peace dialogues around the globe, to guarantee the primary good of access to information, while at the same time ensuring the free circulation of ideas, especially those promoting the ideals of solidarity and social justice.\u201d<\/p>\n But for the media to continue to \u201cremain at the service of the person and of the common good,\u201d they need to live by a set of ethical principles. Benedict describes two of them.<\/p>\n First, \u201cprecisely because we are dealing with realities that have a profound effect on all those dimensions of human life (moral, intellectual, religious, relational, affective, cultural) in which the good of the person is at stake, we must stress that not everything that is technically possible is also ethically permissible.\u201d There is news that is \u201cunfit to print\u201d or show. There is also news that is simply not good to print and that we have no right to know. It is time for mainstream news outlets to resist the seductive calls to model themselves after The National Enquirer, Hard Copy and the paparazzi. \u201cWhen communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society\u2019s control,\u201d the pope says, \u201cit ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person. As a result it risks exercising a negative influence on people\u2019s consciences and choices and definitively conditioning their freedom and their very lives.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n The second principle is that journalism must always be directed to the truth. The media \u201ccan and must contribute to making known the truth about humanity, and defending it against those who tend to deny or destroy it,\u201d Benedict stresses. \u201cOne might even say that seeking and presenting the truth about humanity constitutes the highest vocation of social communication.\u201d Since man \u201cthirsts for truth\u201d more fundamentally than for entertainment, Benedict encourages more programs and stories \u201cin which the truth, beauty and greatness of the person, including the religious dimension of the person, are acknowledged and favorably presented.\u201d This is one way by which the communications media, rather than fostering \u201calienation and confusion,\u201d can once again more powerfully promote \u201cthe quest for the truth and for developing communion between persons and peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n If the media can return to these ethical ideals, rather than exploiting people like Lindsay Lohan and Brittney Spears, they may end up helping them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fr. Roger J. Landry The Anchor Editorial February 1, 2008 In a December interview with Time magazine, novelist Stephen King sought to persuade the magazine to name Lindsay Lohan or Brittney Spears its 2007 Person of the Year. The reporter, at first, thought King was being frivolous. He wasn\u2019t. He argued that, measured in terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1014,708],"tags":[8713,1023,1020],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anchor-editorial","category-articles","tag-2008-year-a","tag-editorial","tag-the-anchor"],"yoast_head":"\n