“We don’t think it is a question of defamatory strategy at all, but media may appropriate a different fact to beat the drum, raising a debate on true or false things, mixing true facts with false facts”. Msgr. Jean-Michel Di Falco Leandri, president of the European Bishops’ Commission for Media (CEEM), spoke those words. He presented SIR the meeting of the presidents of the European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE) taking place in Esztergom, Hungary, from 30th September to 3rd October, devoted to the Church and media. For the bishop, the theme is characterized by difficulties which “are actually never linked to a bad will of the media; they rather depend on the ignorance of journalists in relation to Church matters. Everybody knows how rooted clichés are. Too often, journalists pay their contributions to the keeping of a high number of them. They say that the divorced who marry again are excommunicated, but it is not true, because they confuse the missed access to Eucharistic communion with the exclusion from the community of believers. They say that the Church is in favour of heroic treatment but in fact it is against, because they confuse heroic treatment with refusal of euthanasia”. However, concluded Msgr. Di Falco Leandri, “we should not blame journalists too easily. As Christians, we are supposed to search our consciences. When something goes wrong, fault is on both sides".
