POPE: MASS MEDIA PRODUCES 'POISON'

POPE BENEDICT XVI WARNS OF 'POLLUTION OF THE SPIRIT'
NEWS MEDIA DAILY REPORTING OF EVIL HARDENS HEARTS

ROME (UPI) - Pope Benedict XVI, appearing at a ceremony in Rome, accused the mass media Tuesday of producing "poison" that makes people less sensitive to violence. The Pope made his remarks to an audience of thousands as he celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Piazza di Spagna. He lamented what he described as a steady diet of news about evil in the world. "Every day, through the newspapers, television, radio, evil is reported, repeated, amplified, making us used to horrible things, making us become insensitive, and, in some way, poisoning us," the Pope said. ''This poison makes our faces darker and makes us smile less, stopping us from greeting one another or making eye contact. "Hearts harden and thoughts darken," Benedict said.

He also complained that the mass media "tend to make us feel like spectators, as if evil regards only others and certain things could never happen to us." Instead, Benedict said, "we are all actors, and for better or worse, our behavior has an influence on others." Benedict XVI also accused the media of exploiting the desperate while failing to celebrate everyday goodness. ''Every now and again, people who are usually invisible end up on front page or on our television screens, and they are wrung for every last drop, until the news and their image no longer attracts attention,'' he said. Pope Benedict said thate we "often we complain about the pollution of the air" but there also exists a "pollution of the spirit" that can impede us from treating others as they deserve to be treated. He stressed the importance of remembering that the people around us are not just bodies or "objects with faces, exchangeable and consumable." It is Immaculate Mary, said the Holy Father, that "helps us to rediscover and defend the depth of the person, because in her there is perfect transparence of the soul in the body." The Madonna teaches us to see the world and others "with mercy, with love, with infinite tenderness," especially those who are most alone, most looked down upon, most exploited, the Holy Father explained.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Songs about Sri Radha-Govinda and mundane talks (gramya-varta) are not the same thing. Topics about worldly auspiciousness and inauspiciousness, sense-enjoyment or the dry renunciation of enjoyment are all considered to be mundane talks. … Those who have become tridandis have conquered their body, mind and words. News found in periodicals is full of mundane talks. It is impossible for tridandis to read such newspapers that report topics of the illusory world (maya-katha). By reading them the consciousness no longer cooperates and becomes an enemy to us. “So-and-so did this, so-and-so did that” - by reading such things, adversity and material desires are created.

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakura Prabhupada:
Lecture first published in The Gaudiya
Vol. 11, no.22 - January 1933 - www.gosai.com/krishna-talk/87.