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.

Paul VI: Allocution given on January 24, 1969 to the Officers of the Catholic Association of Italian Journalists (U.C.S.I.). L'Osservatore Romano, January 24, 1969.