MESSAGE OF THE HOLY FATHER
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS DAY
FOR THE WORLD SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS DAY
Theme: The Media of Social Communications at the Service of Truth
Venerable Brothers,
Beloved sons and daughters throughout the world,
and men of good will everywhere,
Modern man will readily agree that many of his attitudes, judgments and stances on various questions, as well as his allegiances and antagonisms, are heavily influenced and to quite a large extent even shaped by his exposure to ideas and suggestions constantly fed to him by the Mass Media.
In our times, both youth and adult stand in the path of a virtually ceaseless flood: of news and interpretation of the news of image and sound, of proposal and stimulant, of suggestion, invitation and allurement. And in this kind of world a rational being will at one time or another find himself facing the disturbing question - how does one recognize the truth? How is one to isolate it, to sort it out, from this tangle of affirmation and contradiction?
1. Every fact has its own truth, but even a straight and simple fact can have many angles, so it is not always easy to grasp the truth of it in its entirety. But that is not to say that it is impossible; far from it. Given the combined diligence and the combined sincerity of the person who communicates the fact and the person to whom it is communicated, there is a very good guarantee that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" will be safely transmitted.
