Informational Ethics

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - February 1, 2008

In a December interview with Time magazine, novelist Stephen King sought to persuade the magazine to name Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears its 2007 Person of the Year. The reporter, at first, thought King was being frivolous. He wasn't. He argued that, measured in terms of they attention have received not merely from the tabloids but from major national media sources, Mesdemoiselles Lohan and Spears have been far more influential figures than eventual winner Vladimir Putin — or General David Petraeus, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad most American political leaders, or any other serious candidates for the designation. Lohan and Spears, King noted, make more magazine covers and headlines, and receive far more google hits, than almost anyone in the country. Naming either of them a Person of the Year would elicit "a scream from the American reading public" and provoke a much-needed and long-overdue public conversation about the "difference between real news and fake news."

With razor-sharp precision, the horror author said that the media today is spawning a truly scary situation in which far more people know the contestants on American Idol than they know their own congressmen. News outlets give more attention to Heath Ledger, Kanye West's mom, Drew Peterson's wife, Natalie Holloway's disappearance, and Tom Brady's ankle than they do to the crisis in Pakistan, the surge in Iraq, whether global warming is for real, and domestic economic or immigration woes. King says this switch, from a news culture focused on facts and the truth about the big issues of the day to one focused on entertainment and ratings, is simply not healthy.

Pope Benedict XVI agrees. Last Thursday, he published his message for World Communications Day, entitled, "The Media: At the Crossroads between Self-Promotion and Service." In it, he says that the media are undergoing a "radical shift" and even a "complete change of role." One way we see this transformation — he notes in similarity to King's observations — occurs when the media panders to our lower instincts for the sake of ratings. "In order to attract listeners and increase the size of audiences," some media sources do not hesitate "to have recourse to vulgarity and violence and to overstep the mark." In doing so, they have become "spokesmen for economic materialism and ethical relativism," which he calls "true scourges of our time."

As serious as that metamorphosis is, Benedict says that there is an even more pernicious transformation that is happening in the media. Rather than trying to "represent reality," he says many media are now seeking to "determine it, owing to the power and force of suggestion that it possesses." Instead of reporting on events, some are seeking to "create" them. This leads to a host of problems, as the instruments of social communication are increasingly "exploited for indiscriminate 'self-promotion'" and are used to "manipulate consciences," subjecting recipients to "agendas dictated by the dominant interests of the day."

In the context of the United States, we all have been exposed to this "radical shift" toward an agenda-driven manipulation of media outlets that the Pope is describing — and it has left many of us cynical. Those with liberal tendencies do not feel they can receive honest reporting on talk radio programs or on Fox News, and those with conservative orientations are suspicious of the vast majority of newspapers and television news programs. Many complain there is no longer a clear demarcation between fact and spin. News outlets have been accused — in some cases, justifiably — of "push reporting," where they seek to advance candidates or particular causes, or defeat others, not merely through the traditional way of persuasive editorials, but through biased news stories.

In the face of this transformation, Benedict approvingly notes that "many people now think there is a need … for 'info-ethics,' just as we have bioethics in the filed of medicine and in scientific research linked to life." Such a code of media ethics would go beyond libel laws and penalties for plagiarism, but seek to protect the dignity of persons covered by the media, as well as the dignity of journalists, recipients of the information and journalism itself.

The media, Benedict says, are essential to human flourishing. "There is no denying the contribution they can make to the diffusion of news, to knowledge of facts and to the dissemination of information; they have played a decisive part … in the spread of literacy and in socialization, as well as the development of democracy and dialogue among peoples. Without their contribution, it would be truly difficult to foster and strengthen understanding between nations, to breathe life into peace dialogues around the globe, to guarantee the primary good of access to information, while at the same time ensuring the free circulation of ideas, especially those promoting the ideals of solidarity and social justice."

But for the media to continue to "remain at the service of the person and of the common good," they need to live by a set of ethical principles. Benedict describes two of them.

First, "precisely because we are dealing with realities that have a profound effect on all those dimensions of human life (moral, intellectual, religious, relational, affective, cultural) in which the good of the person is at stake, we must stress that not everything that is technically possible is also ethically permissible." There is news that is "unfit to print" or show. There is also news that is simply not good to print and that we have no right to know. It is time for mainstream news outlets to resist the seductive calls to model themselves after The National Enquirer, Hard Copy and the paparazzi. "When communication loses its ethical underpinning and eludes society's control," the pope says, "it ends up no longer taking into account the centrality and inviolable dignity of the human person. As a result it risks exercising a negative influence on people's consciences and choices and definitively conditioning their freedom and their very lives."

The second principle is that journalism must always be directed to the truth. The media "can and must contribute to making known the truth about humanity, and defending it against those who tend to deny or destroy it," Benedict stresses. "One might even say that seeking and presenting the truth about humanity constitutes the highest vocation of social communication." Since man "thirsts for truth" more fundamentally than for entertainment, Benedict encourages more programs and stories "in which the truth, beauty and greatness of the person, including the religious dimension of the person, are acknowledged and favorably presented." This is one way by which the communications media, rather than fostering "alienation and confusion," can once again more powerfully promote "the quest for the truth and for developing communion between persons and peoples."

If the media can return to these ethical ideals, rather than exploiting people like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, they may end up helping them.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.