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2.
OPPORTUNITIES AND OBLIGATIONS a) Of Communicators
73. Communicators breathe
life into the dialogue that happens within the family of man. It is they who
preside while the exchange proceeds around the vast "round table"
that the media have made. Their vocation is nobly to promote the purpose of
social communication. This purpose is to accelerate every sort of human
progress and to increase cooperation among men until there exists a genuine
communion among them.
74. When they come to choose
the subjects for their productions, communicators will attempt to match all the
needs of their public. They will be scrupulous in seeing that every relevant
group is fairly represented. To do this, they have to try to foresee the kind
of audience they serve. There should, accordingly, be close cooperation between
communicators and recipients. Only in this way can these social communications
set up a working and workable dialogue between free and adequately prepared
people. And this dialogue must not ignore the age, culture and social
background of the participants. The media of social communication are the right
instruments for the propagation of this sort of interchange between men.
75. Pope Paul said of
communicators that they are obliged to pay continual attention to and to carry
on an uninterrupted observation of the external world: "You must
continually stand at the window, open to the world; you are obliged to study
the facts, the events, the opinions, the current interests, the thought of the
surrounding environment".46 Because factual information provides a
public service, not only must news reporting keep to the facts, and bear down
upon the most important of these but the meaning of what it reports should be
brought out by explanation. The real bearing of one item of news upon another
should be pointed out especially when different items reach the recipient
without evidence of any discernible pattern. In this way the recipient will be
able to use this information as a basis for his judgement and decision in
matters affecting the community.
76. Communicators should not
allow themselves to forget that the nature of the mass media makes their
audience a vast one. While they must keep faith with their artistic integrity,
they will remember at the same time both their power and the grave
responsibilities that it brings with it. For they have been given a rare chance
to promote the happiness and progress of men. In their productions justice and
integrity of judgement will impel artists to be concerned both with the needs
of minorities as well as of larger and more numerous groups.And if some of the
means of social communication, whether by law or local practice, in fact enjoy
a monopoly, then a scrupulous impartiality must be sought since, in such a
situation, the danger is that monologue may replace dialogue.
77. Communicators who debase
their skills and their work for money or for easy popularity and passing
acclaim are not only failing their public. In the end, they are demeaning their
profession.
78. Critics have a commanding
role in getting communicators to maintain the highest standards of integrity
and service and continually to make progress. As they themselves are also
communicators, they provide the self-criticism within the profession and in
this way they are able to protect creative artists from external pressures.
They must be convinced that integrity and incorruptibility are the essence of
their profession. They will be inspired by fidelity to truth and a passion for
justice. In a cool and objective way, they should try to display both the
strength and the weakness of the work under review so that the public can make
its own fair judgement. The importance of their own creative art should not be
underrated, especially when through their wide knowledge and their penetrating
judgement they are able to discover in works of art meaning and riches that may
have escaped even the artists themselves. Yet they should not attract all
attention to themselves at the expense of the work under study.
79. The founding of
professional associations for communicators is most valuable. They are very
useful as places where opinions and experiences can be exchanged. They form a
basis for organized cooperation. They help in coping with the sort of
difficulties that are inherent in the communicator's task. These associations
can draw up codes of ethics on a basis of principle and experience. Through the
guidance they offer, these codes can help in producing work that meets the
needs of social communication. Fundamentally, the codes of these associations
ought to be positive. They should not be wholly preoccupied with forbidding;
rather they should concentrate on how to improve what can be done for the
communicators' fellow men.
80. In order to survive and
to expand, the means of social communication require reliable financial
backing. It therefore happens that communicators must at times, either directly
or indirectly, seek funds from public or private sources. The men who provide
these funds can powerfully influence the quality of the product. But they must
be discerning in choosing which enterprises to support and desire the good of
mankind rather than financial advantage. As long as they bear in mind that the
means of social communication are more than commercial enterprises, are, in
fact, at one and the same time, cultural and social services, these investors
will not exercise any undue pressure that might distort the proper liberty of
the communicators, the artists or what we have called the recipients.
81. The recipients can do
more to improve the quality of the media than is generally realized; so their
responsibility to do this is all the greater. Whether or not the media can set
up an authentic dialogue with society depends very largely upon these recipients.
If they do not insist on expressing their views, if they are content with a
merely passive role, all the efforts of the communicators to establish an
uninhibited dialogue will be useless.
82. Recipients can be
described as active when they know how to interpret communications accurately
and can judge them in the light of their origin, background and total content.
They will be active when they make their selection judiciously and critically,
when they fill out incomplete information that comes their way with more news
which they themselves have obtained from other sources, and finally, when they
are ready to make their views heard in public, whether they agree, or partly
agree or totally disagree.
83. There is the obvious
objection that there is little a man can do alone at the receiving end. This is
necessarily pessimistic. Recipients can find strength in unity. There exists no
reason why they should not work closely together. They can band themselves into
associations, just as communicators have been advised to do. Their
organizations need not be set up with the single end of giving expression to
what the man in the street feels about the products of the media. They could
just as well avail themselves of organizations that already exist and which
have a wider scope but compatible aims.
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