ARE ETHICS POSSIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY COMMUNICATIONS?

VATICAN CITY, JUN 11, 2003 (VIS) - Archbishop John Foley, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, last evening addressed the Rotary Club of Rome on the topic "Ethics: Are they possible in contemporary communications?"

"By communications," he said, "we mean not only the mass media: newspapers, magazines, cinema, radio and television, but also such interpersonal methods as the telephone and such newer methods ... as the Internet. By ethics, we refer not only to those moral norms which should regulate not only what we place on the communications media, but also to the considerations of ownership and indeed concentration of ownership of the media, access to media, and use of media."

Archbishop Foley noted that the pontifical council has produced three documents on the question of ethics and communications: "Ethics in advertising"; "Ethics in Social Communications" and "Ethics in the Internet."

He said the first document was at the request of people in the advertising industry, and added: "The basic principles for ethics in advertising and in all communications are three: truth; the dignity of the human person and the common good.

Elaborating on these principles, the archbishop stated: "In any human communications, we cannot tell a deliberate untruth. Communication is designed to transmit trustworthy information, and credibility is severely damaged with every deliberate untruth; we break down the truth which should exist among human beings and we deprive them of the accurate information they should have. The dignity of each individual means that he or she should not be deceived and should not be exploited. The common good is served by the truth and not by propaganda designed to stimulate conformity and to create false impressions."

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