during a Meeting with Italian journalists At the Vatican on Monday, Pope Leo XIV warned that news reporting “must avoid the risk of becoming propaganda.”
When reporting on today’s “dramatic circumstances of the war,” the Holy Father urged news professionals to verify news “so as not to become mouthpieces for those in power,” a task that is “even more urgent and delicate – I would say essential.”
He also stressed that journalists should report on the suffering caused to the population by war as well as highlight its human face and relate it “through the eyes of the victims, so that it is not turned into a video game.”
“It is not easy to work on a news program and its in-depth segments in a few minutes. But that is the challenge,” he told members of Italian broadcaster RAI and the editorial team of its TG2 news program at a March 16 event marking the outlet’s 50th anniversary.
No technological innovation can replace creativity, critical judgment and freedom of thought.
Pope Leo XIV
In his address, the Pope also reflected on the challenges that television journalism has faced, such as the transition from analog to digital systems. In this context, he said that “No technological innovation can replace creativity, critical discretion and freedom of thought.”
The Holy Father addressed “the challenge of our time” – artificial intelligence – and underlined the need to “regulate communication according to the human paradigm, not according to the technological one,” something which, in his view, means “knowing how to distinguish between means and ends.”
He also highlighted looseness and pluralism as characteristics characterizing Italian networks. Specifically, he referred to procrastination as “the rejection of ideological preconceptions and an open-minded approach to reality.”
“We all know how difficult it is to allow ourselves to be surprised by facts, by encounters, by the gaze and voices of others; how strong is the temptation to seek, see and hear only that which confirms our own opinions. But without this openness there can be no good communication, nor true freedom and healthy pluralism,” he stressed.
Finally, he invited journalists to promote diversity – inspired by the spirit of friendship – “in an era dominated by polarization, ideological closed-mindedness and slogans that prevent us from seeing and understanding the complexity of reality.”
this story was first published By ACI Prensa, the Spanish-language affiliate of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
