Ethicist issues challenges to communicators

By Teresia Mutuku, Communications Officer and Web Manager, WACC

Communicators at the 2008 Catholic Media Convention.

A leading Canadian ethicist, Professor Margaret Somerville, has warned faith based communicators against using overtly religious language and advocated the development of a new language to convey the “secular sacred”.

“I’m sometimes deeply dismayed by language religious people use in the public sphere,” she said. Not only is the language alienating; it makes it easier for opponents to dismiss the arguments as merely religious, she told a gathering of 400 communicators from across North America attending the 2008 Catholic Media Convention at the Sheraton Centre, downtown Toronto, May 28-30.

She noted that a good secular or non-religious argument can alter perspectives.

Somerville challenged Church media to become “word warriors” and to give people “the words they need to protect human dignity.”

“Good ethics require good facts,” she said. Lies and deliberate omissions are never ethically acceptable.

Somerville said that studies show people trust the media less than they trust government or business, thus urging communicators to build trust among their audience.

People need to be given the words so they can express what they believe ethically, she said. “Give them the words to speak their truth.”

Professor Somerville, founding director of McGill University’s Centre for medicine, ethics and law in Montreal, is a regular contributor to various forms of media.

The president of the Catholic Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Archbishop Claudio Celli, urged communicators to be courageous and “authentic witnesses to the truth.”

“We should be communicators who will interpret modern cultural needs, committing ourselves to approaching the communications age not as a time of alienation and confusion, but as a valuable time for the quest for the truth and for developing communion between persons and peoples”, he said when opening the convention.

Archbishop Celli noted that good journalists and communicators must be concerned with truth, goodness and hope even in the most dire circumstances. “This is the challenge facing the media, the challenge we must all face in our daily lives in order to become men and women who show solidarity to all people.”

The annual convention brings together professionals in communications for the purpose of spiritual and professional development. This year’s theme was “Proclaim it from the roof tops”

More than 30 speakers conducted seminars on specific topics related to different forms of communications. Various communicators were presented with awards in recognition of their professional excellence.

The convention was sponsored by the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, the Catholic Academy of Communication Arts Professionals and the Association of Roman Catholic Communicators of Canada.

WACC was represented by Teresia Mutuku, the Communications Officer and Web Manager.

(Source: Catholic News Service)