“’Truth’ does not sell, ‘News’ does”

“Truth does not sell, news does”. This was the answer of Henry Booth Luce, former owner of the prestigious TIME magazine. All media institutions worldwide, except for the Vatican City daily Osservatorre Romano, exist for profit. News, especially the sensational ones that feed people’s curiosity, bring in lots of money for the trimedia of press, radio and television. The advertisements, which need a lot of psychology and artistry to catch attention, augment media owners’ profit.

Because money heavily motivates its tremendous power to inform people and to form their opinion, the trimedia organizations are open to control and manipulation. With money they can distort the reporting and interpretation of happenings, incidents, events, in the social, economic, political, cultural, and religious aspects of life. Because people depend heavily on media for information and make their opinion and decision based on received data, we can say that in this state of affairs our lives are controlled by media leaving us unfree and enslaved by the wishes of the powers that be.

But only the truth can make us free ( John 8:31-32). This truth, which is synonymous with reality, can only be ours when informed and formed by God’s Word we have become the Lord’s disciples or followers. This means that we are able to intimately experience the Lord in the ‘here’ and ‘now’, that is, in the reality of the present moment. Pope Francis affirms the presence of God in everything and every person anywhere, and encourages us to find Him there. When that happens we have found the truth about everything in existence. God is Existence Itself. He defines Himself as I AM WHO AM (Exodus 3:14).