Hope was almost tangible through the screen of the SIGNIS Asia seminar, Journalism in a Fragmented World, which began this week. The air was full of questions about freedom of expression, about the convictions held in that regard, and about the truth. Attending were more than 40 professional journalists from 14 countries, linked digitally.
Being a communicator of truth is a vocation for life, pointed out Helen Osman, SIGNIS president, at the start of the Seminar. She inspired participants with the story of Oscar Romero, who became a microphone of God by communicating the truth: “Oscar Romero’s testimony is powerful, especially for Catholic journalists. How can journalists be bastions of peace and a “voice for the voiceless”?
As Ms. Osman, a US journalist, points out, truth calls us to defragment reality, communicating impartially amid a polarized society, divisions in which the media does play a role.
In her opinion, “We can build a journalism of peace, focused on what unites us, what dignifies human beings and what makes them unique, including from the perspective of the media.”
You can’t help to wonder about the questions that arise and are commonly held by journalists in in different countries like Japan or Bangladesh, India or Ecuador, and many more. Their reporter’s intuition tells them that the truth is at risk. It is necessary to bring peace into the unique lexicon of the media.
This is how the foundation of a community of global journalists can be built: a group of professionals that together will meet every Tuesday for the next seven weeks to learn from each other, and to learn about the stories that led them to their journalistic vocation.