Religious freedom is among the values threatened by the world media, experts at the conference say

KRAKOW, Poland (OSV News) – The need for quality journalism and media ethics is increasing, experts underlined at the academic conference ‘Media for Man’ organized by the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. “Right now it’s a matter of people’s safety,” organizers said.

“I am both excited and terrified by the great interest in media ethics topics in recent years,” said Katarzyna Drag, professor of communications at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow and organizer of the conference.

“I am very happy because media ethics is an important and fundamental part of journalism. And terrified, because this increased interest is a consequence of bad practices that are increasingly spreading in the media,” Drag underlined.

Media users are concerned that the media space often lacks values and endangers human dignity – “we have gone so far as to look for solutions to improve not only the content but also our safety,” Drag said.

According to Martin Kugler, chairman of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC), the pattern Drag mentioned is especially visible in reporting on Christian persecution around the world.

During his April 23 conference speech, he mentioned a social media post on Celebrated Easter.

“The influential German politician, a Twitter user, only mentioned that the attack targeted ‘praying people and travelers’, when in fact it was a deliberate attack on Christians and Catholics,” Kugler said.

He underlined that with regard to the persecution of Christians or reporting on “legal restrictions or legal threats to the freedom of Christians,” the media normally “does not publish these stories because they do not understand them enough,” Kugler told OSV News. Every day, OIDAC monitors the media for stories that are being covered misleadingly by the media, or not being covered at all – and every day they find examples of this.

One of these, he said, is the reporting – or lack thereof in the mainstream media – of the regular mass killings of Christians in Nigeria.

“Even the European Parliament is ignoring the real reasons for the violence in Nigeria,” Kugler said, raising awareness that a February 8 European Parliament resolution listed among the “factors that fueled the clashes” the institution of the European Union “territorial disputes, ethnic conflicts” mentioned tensions, access to scarce resources and environmental degradation,” but not deliberate violence against a religious group, Kugler said.

The resolution forced the Commission of the Bishops’ Conference of the European Union, or COMECE, to issue a statement on February 9, saying the European Parliament resolution “downplays the religious dimension of the conflict.”

If the persecution of Christians in Nigeria had been on the front pages of mainstream newspapers in the EU, the situation might have been different.

“What is the solution? Formation, formation, formation,” Kugler said, noting that “the omission of information from context” is a plague and that “we need the formation of secular journalists.”

“If we don’t call out persecution by name, we won’t bring about change,” Kugler added, pointing to a 2022 Faith and News Study that found 61% of survey respondents said the media is “faith-based perpetuate based stereotypes” and 43% said they feel that “today’s reporting on religion causes unease and anxiety (even more so in secular countries).”

Paul Wojda, associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, said one reason for ignorant or unbalanced media reporting is the “need for speed.”

Wojda underlined that with the unlimited distribution and access to the internet and social media, there is an “accelerating cycle that puts pressure on journalists and media people to create news.”

For Wojda, what has made the news business a place of threat rather than opportunity is “the loss of what some have called slow journalism,” which allowed for deeper and better investigation of the story. Lack of humility is also a problem, he said.

“Whether it’s law, medicine or education, one of the things that a profession does is that it requires humility – a humility in the face of standards that you didn’t create, but for which you are accountable,” Wojda told OSV News.

“If a profession is healthy, it has an internal system of standards, a code of conduct to which each of its members is accountable to each other. And I think with the explosion of social media, the explosion of channels for getting news, everyone now considers themselves an expert,” Wojda said, pointing to “the loss of integrity within the profession” as a real problem.

Drag, who also heads the Institute of Journalism, Media and Social Communication at Poland’s Pontifical University, agreed, adding that the “media bubbles” in which users function pose a threat to media ethics.

“If we only follow what the media feeds us, if we follow one way that the media shows us, we as users are limited to just this one specific ‘bubble’,” Drag said, underlining that “it will never to develop. ”, and that this leads to extreme polarization of societies, which poses a threat to security.

“If we add the second problem – a very intense technological development that forgets people and their interpersonal relationships,” we have a recipe for disaster, Drag said.

She underlined that Catholic media play an important role in highlighting values, human relationships and balancing opinions. “Catholic media often elevates rather than undermines, emphasizing values rather than scandals, so what Catholic media does is of great importance,” she said.

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