Pope Francis asks the media to end the post-truth and calls them to contribute to fraternity

Pope Francis called on the media to put an end to the "logic of post-truth, misinformation, defamation, slander." In his message addressed to the participants of the 4th Meeting of the Popular Movement, which took place on the afternoon of Saturday, October 16, the Bishop of Rome invoked "in the name of God" that the media end with "that sick fascination for the scandal and the dirty, that they seek to contribute to human brotherhood and empathy with the most vulnerable ”.

This call was included among nine other requests expressed by the pope "in the name of God" to achieve the urgent necessary changes to those who have decision-making power in the world to work for a more just, supportive and fraternal society.

In a verbatim way, he expressed: “I want to ask the media in the name of God to put an end to the logic of post-truth, misinformation, defamation, slander and that sick fascination with scandal and filth, that they seek to contribute to human brotherhood and empathy with the most vulnerable ”.

In another part of his message, the pope regretted that it is not news or empathy not even the food crisis, which could generate more annual deaths than Covid-19 in the immediate future.

This situation is so evident that it cannot be hidden by “so many post-truth mechanisms” and it is also an expression of the culture of indifference, as if “this suffering third of our world is not of sufficient interest to the mainstream media and the opinion makers ”. A world that remains “hidden, huddled”, like other little-known aspects of social life that the pandemic has made worse. Chronic stress and anxiety in children, adolescents and young people, for example, exacerbated by isolation and lack of real contact with friends. "Friendship is the way in which love always resurfaces", the Pope recalls, in fact, and although it is clear that technology can be a tool for good, "it can never supplant contact." "It is not news, it does not generate empathy", not even the food crisis, which could generate more deaths annually than Covid-19 in the immediate future, he lamented.

He said he felt sad when he was branded with "epithets" when it is intended to " reduce any reflection to a mere degrading adjectival" every time the pontiff speaks of the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church on the preferential option for the poor, destiny universal goods, solidarity, subsidiarity, participation, the common good. For the pope, this attitude “ is part of the post-truth plot that seeks to nullify any humanist search for an alternative to capitalist globalization,” which, he explained, “is part of the culture of discarding and is part of the technocratic paradigm.

“You have to listen to the peripheries, open the doors to them and allow them to participate. The suffering of the world is better understood together with those who suffer. In my experience, when people, men and women who have suffered in their own flesh injustice, inequality, abuse of power, deprivation, xenophobia, in my experience I see that they understand much better what others live and are capable of to help them open, realistically, paths of hope, "he said.