ARCHBISHOP FOLEY: CREDIBILITY, CORNERSTONE OF JOURNALISM

VATICAN CITY, JAN 23, 2002 (VIS) - On Tuesday, January 22, Archbishop John P. Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, gave an address at the Forum of the Association of Taiwan Journalists. The event took place in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China.

In his speech, the archbishop recalled the document that his dicastery published for World Communications Day 2000. He concentrated especially on the "credibility" of information, which he defined as "the most precious characteristic of a journalist," and on the need to "promote human development" by means of the communications media.

"Faced with grave injustices, it is not enough for communicators simply to say that their job is to report things as they are. Even more fundamentally, communication structures and policies and the allocation of technology are factors helping to make some people 'information rich' and others 'information poor' at a time when prosperity, and even survival, depend upon information."

"The most important thing for each of us is to maintain our integrity and our credibility in a world filled with the temptation at least to compromise, if not surrender. The public will never forgive us if we betray them; perhaps even more telling, we will never forgive ourselves if we betray our trust to be servants of the truth and of a moral and just society."

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