February 17-23, 2008 Issue |
Posted 2/12/08 at 12:58 PM
Pope Benedict XVI sent a message to Catholics who watch TV
or movies, or read periodicals that’s in a line with his warning about the
“dictatorship of relativism.” In his World Communications Day address, he spoke
about finding the truth in the media.
The Communications Day theme this year uses a nice little
turn of phrase: “Searching for the Truth in Order to Share It With Others.”
It’s a good application of the Christian vocation to the media-driven world in
which we live.
In the message, the Pope recognizes the pervasive presence
of the media in contemporary society, “Truly, there is no area of human
experience, especially given the vast phenomenon of globalization, in which the
media have not become an integral part of interpersonal relations and of
social, economic, political and religious development,” he writes. He doesn’t
say that with a sigh. That influence is often positive, he points out. But he
does warn against the violence and vulgarity that the media often bring to
entertainment and the manipulation they can bring to the news.
In the Zenit news service, Legionary Father John Flynn
provided some examples to illustrate the Holy Father’s arguments.
He saw news manipulation in the reporting on the numbers of
people who attended a Church-sponsored, pro-family rally Dec. 30 in Madrid.
Organizers claimed that 1 to 2 million people were present. Madrid’s municipal
authorities said it was easily a million. But El País, the socialist-inclined
Spanish daily, reported Dec. 31 that no more than 160,000 people attended the
event. One report, on the Internet-based Periodista Digital, further reduced
the number in a Dec. 30 chronicle of the rally to “thousands.”
The Spanish daily El Mundo caught another distortion in the
media coverage: In spite of the importance of the rally and the interest in the
event by many Catholics in Spain, no television station, apart from a minor one
run by the Church, bothered to provide a complete transmission of the rally
held in Madrid.
Father Flynn cited other examples of media manipulation.
Down Under, the copycat hit “Australian Idol” banned
participants from talking about religion and, in a public appearance held at
the Sydney Motor Show, the final six contestants on the program were instructed
not to answer questions about their religion or personal beliefs. The show’s
creator, Fremantle Media, was reportedly upset that some of the participants
were being supported by a large Christian audience.
In Hollywood, he saw more examples. The film Elizabeth: The
Golden Age caused protests for its biased historical vision. On Nov. 2, the eve
of its release in Britain, the Telegraph newspaper published an article listing
the many historical faults in the production. Register readers saw Steven D.
Greydanus’ review telling how the film portrayed Catholics uniformly as
traitors and conspirators.
Sometimes it seems the media purposely sets out to offend
Christians, notes Father Flynn. A Sept. 21 report on the London-based Times
newspaper website informed readers about “a beer-bellied, hip-hop styled,
Jesus,” featured in a publicity campaign for a Belgian television station. The
station, part of the European media company RTL, also portrayed Jesus flanked
by two bikini-clad blondes.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Catholic League
recently protested the comedy musical Jerry Springer: The Opera, which in
January was scheduled to run at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Said Catholic League
President Bill Donohue: “It’s an all-out assault on Christianity.”
The show has played in a number of locations over the last
few years, causing protests wherever it goes. In England the BBC broadcast the
show in 2005 — and got challenged in court by Stephen Green of the evangelical
group Christian Voice, who brought blasphemy charges against the BBC.
A final decision came when the High Court of Justice ruled
that broadcasters and theaters staging live productions could not be prosecuted
for blasphemy. One article noted that the BBC received a record 63,000
complaints about the show when it was broadcast.
Offending Islam gets a different reaction, of course. A digital book version of The Three Little
Pigs was turned down from an awards competition sponsored by an agency of the
British government because it could offend Muslims, who consider pigs unclean.
In a Jan. 23 article the BBC recounted that Becta, an educational technology
agency, rejected a digital version of the classic tale from its Bett Award
competition, because the judges warned that “the use of pigs raises cultural
issues.”
Instead of falling into the errors of materialism and
relativism, Benedict XVI recommended that the media “can and must contribute to
making known the truth about humanity, and defending it against those who tend
to deny or destroy it.”
This is particularly urgent, he said, in the current context
where the new media are changing the nature of communication.
We all search for the truth. The media can help us find it.
“Let us ask the Holy Spirit,” Benedict XVI concluded, “to
raise up courageous communicators and authentic witnesses to the truth.”
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