Category: WM Special

Waseda University in Tokyo is opening Japan’s first graduate school of journalism. The school’s program was patterned largely upon that of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, in New York (U.S.A.), and similar programs in other schools overseas.

Even recognizing the contribution mass media make to the modern world, Benedict XVI pointed some dangers of their sometimes unrestricted power. And warned: “The media can also present and support models of development which serve to increase rather than reduce the technological divide between rich and poor countries.”

Catholic media – even when they have a wider circulation than secular media – do not seem to have a great impact on society at a larger scale. Why? The answer is simple. Much too often, our media speak to the Church, forgetting to evangelize society. There is plenty to do to reach people where it counts: in their mentality, in their social attitudes, in offering possible alternatives enlightened by the Gospel.

Information is everywhere − at our homes or in the streets; in traditional newspapers and magazines, in television and radio, in the ads or in the web, in our PC’s, laptops or even mobile phones. For the first time in history, we all live in a “global village” where, wherever we are, we can follow a war in the East, an election in the West or a storm or a flood in the South. Almost at the same moment they are happening.