The injured truth” “

“Among the numerous victims of war, there is one that does not arouse sufficient concern: the truth. Its injuries do not heal rapidly, due to the deliberate disinformation, propaganda and manipulation that condition trust between public and media”. The point is made in the last number of “Signis Media”, the bi-monthly journal of Signis, the Catholic Association for Communication, present in 140 countries. It contains an article entitled “The injured truth” in which the issue of information relating to the war in Iraq is tackled. We present a résumé of the text, drafted by the organization’s ecumenical group “Media, culture and society” of Signis. The images of war. “The images from Iraq have been one-sided. Each faction – says the article – has shown only what supported its own positions. The media too have become an arsenal of war”. This isn’t just ‘propaganda’: it is “using the media to ensure that public opinion support the aims established by the political power and to destabilise the adversary. While on the Iraqi side the public was regaled with the caricatured news from the front of the Minister of Information, on the American side journalists were invited to join the coalition troops and follow them in the military operations. Many journalists thus lost their position as independent observers in order to adopt the point of view of those they were accompanying”. However, this one-sidedness of images, the article notes, “did not affect only the journalists or the media, but was also the consequence of certain expectations on the part of public opinion, which sought in the media the ‘a priori’ confirmation of its own opinions pro or contra the war”. The voice of the Churches. The voice of the Church has been raised in response to this situation: “war is the last means that should be used to resolve conflicts and eliminate injustice”. But there is also another factor that inspired the position of the Churches: “if the attacks of 11 September 2001 were conducted in the name of God, if Saddam Hussein shamelessly exploited the Islamic religious factor, it is all the more necessary that the Churches should distance themselves from US President G.W. Bush, who invoked the Christian God to justify the war and proclaimed nothing less than a ‘crusade’. No. The war in Iraq is not a war of religion, and the Christian Churches have clearly rejected both war and any religious justification for it”. Christian media at the service of peace. “A peace founded on lies and disinformation is a peace built on sand. A lasting peace rests on the rock of justice, solidarity, freedom and above all truth, as affirmed by ‘Pacem in terris'”. That’s why the Christian media are called to promote knowledge of “the numerous positive experiences that contribute to the construction of peace and that interest public opinion”, and to “take the initiative in transmissions to foster the diffusion of non-violence, often ignored at the present time”. Another duty of the Christian media and journalists is to “reflect on the conditions of truth in a context of war”. So, how can the conditions be created to ensure that truth be respected both in information and in the audio-visual media? “In the field of radio, it has been ascertained that balanced, truly international information may render an essential service to peace”. But the Christian media have another duty: to “give space to the point of view of the other side and not just in time of war. It’s a duty that needs an appropriate teaching process to arouse in the public curiosity for and attention to others. The media, in this sense, may make a major contribution to peace”.