The Pope Benedictus PP.XVI in his annual message to the
world of communications wrote, “The media must avoid becoming spokesmen for
economic materialism and ethical relativism, true scourges of our time.”
The papal message recognized all of the developments in communication
technologies and the many contributions media make in the sharing of
information. At the highest level, media can and should be used as “an
instrument at the service of a world of greater justice and solidarity.”
Dangerously, media as an instrument risks being used to promote the dominant
interests of the day, as a means for “spreading ideological purposes and
aggressive advertising of consumer products”.
Today, humanity is at a crossroads between “self-promotion and Service” and the
role of media is undergoing a radical shift, “the complete change of the role…to
claim not simply to represent reality, but to determine it.”
We are, in fact, at many crossroads, not only in the use of media as tool, but
perhaps in the use of all tools possessed by the human being. Media may need an
injection of ethics, not as policy or code, but stemming from ethical
consciousnesses. Behind media as tool are persons choosing to consciously or
unconsciously spread selected information. The recipient must consciously accept
or reject the message sent. To build any sort of “info-ethics”, ethical
individuals must first be built.
To build such a human being, a unifying philosophical vision that goes beyond
personal desire and interest is necessary. With ethics, it is possible to have
media function as a tool used for the common good – communicating that which is
true. For if we communicate only superficial, partisan and commercial
information via the media, are we the users of the tool or the tool being used
by forces to which we subject ourselves?
