In Hamburg on 4 October – for the occasion of awarding the Catholic Media Prize to Ariel Hauptmeier for the “Print” category and to Tina Soliman and the cameraman Torsten Lapp for the “Electronic” category – Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Episcopal Conference, referred to the duties of those who work in the communications sector. He underlined the fact that journalists must “maintain their independence”, “take responsibility for their own actions” and “also report on people in the ‘second rank'”. One of the criteria for assigning the prize, he said, is an “orientation towards Christian values”, “the promotion of understanding of people and social values”, reinforcing “a sense of human and social responsibility” and contributing to the “coexistence of different societies, religions, cultures and individuals”. “The media represents a barometer of the cultural state of the country”, he affirmed during the award ceremony, because they not only relay events but “set the standards we share for understanding the world. They are an integral part of the development of cultural identity”. Consequently, in the Cardinal’s view, the media bears a heavy burden of moral responsibility. Lehmann also expressed a desire for “more completeness in certain cases”, for slower and more pondered information, because “we spectators need more explanation to understand the complicated relationships between the many political, economic and social processes in our own country and abroad”.
