VATICAN CITY, JUN 4, 2000 (VIS) - Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, president of the Vatican's central committee for the Jubilee, presided at Mass this morning in the Paul VI Hall on the concluding day of the Jubilee of Journalists, a four-day event which brought together 7,000 journalists from more than 50 countries throughout the world.
In his homily, he recalled the principal duties of journalists, especially in today's fast-paced world of ever-changing technology "which eliminates time and distance" and "prefigures a new media - a new type of journalist." Journalists must continue, he stressed, to have "a social mission," that of a "tireless mediator between the reporting of the story and the meaning they are charged to give it."
In particular, stated Cardinal Etchegaray, "we must pay attention to the deontological questions. ... The ethical demands which you call for are all the more pressing since they express the anguish of the very society of which you are the reflection.
"Yes, renounce all 'political agendas' which base the order of the day in a newsroom exclusively on the major themes which emerge from survey polls. Yes, react to conformity in a media which plagiarizes, repeating itself, agreeing with each other to the point of nourishing only one source of information. Yes, struggle against the dictatorship of urgency, of instant news, by no means a guarantee of truth. ... Give a hierarchy to your messages instead of cluttering them up in bulk. Think of all those who today are only capable of 'zapping' before the onslaught of news, or of 'surfing' on the crest of waves of images."
He then asked: "When media makers move on the world map according to political or commercial opportunities, is not some buried misery left in the shadows, or some forgotten war, or some lost solidarity? Do not hesitate to break ... the circles of collective shortsightedness, ... helping us to see far enough to see that there is also man."
Cardinal Etchegaray described his words as "an examination of conscience ... in keeping with the Jubilee season." He concluded by rendering "homage to those journalists who with courage have obtained great victories against fear, injustice, violence, hunger, and illiteracy."
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