Media advised: Ask the tough questions

CEBU CITY -- The use of new media, like online social networks, can make the world better, but also sets the traps of “new addictions,” Cebu’s media workers were told at the opening of the 18th Cebu Press Freedom Week Sunday.

Fr. Carmelo Diola, who celebrated the opening day’s mass, said the new media have made possible more informed citizens, as seen in the collapse of tyrannical regimes.

But these have also exposed people to new addictions, and have created for media workers the “constant temptation of speed over content,” Fr. Diola said.

He celebrated the mass that followed the media workers’ walk from the Cebu Business District to SM City Cebu’s Trade Hall.

Media’s challenges today include the need to ask important questions, even if they’re not popular or convenient, Fr. Diola said. He said media workers should also ask themselves: “On whose authority am I making these authoritative statements?”

He used the day’s gospel reading -- about Jesus Christ asking, “Who do you think I am?” -- to remind media workers to avoid moral relativism and to regularly ask themselves if their work contributes to the common good and leads to necessary changes.

Cebu-based media workers celebrate Press Freedom Week every September, in the week that includes September 21 or the anniversary of the 1972 declaration of martial law.

Fr. Diola, in his homily, recalled how he won an essay competition as a high school student in 1973 by writing praises to martial law.

“I was blind and I was not free, but I did not know it,” he said. It was only when he pursued a master’s degree in the United States, Fr. Diola said, that he realized the repression and harm martial law had caused.

During the program that followed the mass, teams from The Freeman, Cebu Daily News and Sun.Star presented dance numbers.

Sun.Star won the Star of the Parade and Star of the Show awards during the opening program.

In an interview after the mass, Fr. Diola said a Cebuano-Visayan version of the Holy Bible will soon be released. A copy will be given to Pope Benedict XVI during Blessed Pedro Calungsod’s canonization next month.

He said at least 10,000 copies will be produced by November through their publisher Pedro Calungsod Bible Animators Group. They will sell copies not just in the country but also abroad.

There were eight Bible scholars from the Visayas and Mindanao who made the Cebuano-Visayan version of the Bible, said Fr. Diola of the 12-year project.

Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, he added, supports the Visayan version of the Bible. “This is the first, we believe, Catholic study Bible by Catholic Bible scholars,” Diola said. (FMG of Sun.Star Cebu/Sunnex)