Benedict XVI on the media

This excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI's second Regina Cæli address in 2005 seems appropriate for the current silly season in America: the media can promote knowledge, dialog and peace, or prejudice, contempt and violence. The perennial remedies are personal responsibility, objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good.

Responsibility and respect for human dignity seem to be basic human habits learned (or not) at a young age in the family; perhaps objectivity and sight of the common good are habits of thought that come with maturity. Can they be taught? Are they? What would an objective media serving the common good even look like? [how about C-SPAN? -ed.]

Anyways,

World Communications Day is being celebrated this Sunday on the theme: "The communications media: at the service of understanding among peoples". In today's world of imagery, the mass media effectively become an extraordinary resource to promote solidarity and understanding within the human family. We have had incredible proof of this recently on the occasion of the death and solemn funeral rites of my beloved Predecessor, John Paul II. It all depends, however, on how these means are used.

These important tools of communication can support reciprocal knowledge and dialogue or, on the contrary, fuel prejudice and contempt between individuals and peoples; they can contribute to spreading peace or fomenting violence. This is why an appeal must always be made to personal responsibility; all must do their part to ensure objectivity, respect for human dignity and attention to the common good in all forms of communication. In this way they contribute to bringing down the walls of hostility that continue to divide humanity, and to strengthening the bonds of friendship and love which are signs of God's Kingdom in history.

(Hmm... insidious politics worked its way back in.)