[Media-watch] Fwd: Radio Vatican spreads pope's anti-war message around the world

[Chris Keene]

English website at http://www.Vaticanradio.org/inglese/enindex.html

It might be worth publicising Radio Vatican, as one way of counteracting
the bias in the mainstream media in this country.

This email describes the station, its history, and how its coverage
differs from the mainstream, in looking at the consequences of war for
the civilian population

Chris

Radio Vatican spreads pope's anti-war message around the world
> Monday, 31-Mar-2003 10:00AM Story from AFP / Bruno Bartolini
> Copyright 2003 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
> http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/dh/Qiraq-war-vatican.RjYY_DMV.html
>
>  VATICAN CITY, March 31 (AFP) - Radio Vatican is going all out to spread
> Pope John Paul II's anti-war message around the world and highlight the
> human cost of the war, director of programmes Ignacio Arregui said Monday.
>
> "Unlike other broadcasters, we don't go on about the number of missiles
> fired at Baghdad or the number of tanks charging through the desert,"
> Arregui, a Jesuit from Spain's Basque region, told AFP.
>
> "But thanks to our special envoys -- men of the cloth who remain with
their
> flock and with those who suffer -- we can, for example, bring live
coverage
> of the consequences of the destruction of the communications and water
> infrastructures. In other words, the disasters caused by the conflict," he
> added.
>
> "Our interviews are devoted to public health workers and hospitals, to the
> sicknesses and epidemics that may end up killing more people than bombs."
>
> Radio Vatican is run by the Jesuits, or "the company of Jesus", often
> associated with the Catholic Church's missionary work. The station's
Jesuit
> director, Pasquale Borromeo, is responsible for some very opinionated
> editorials.
>
> On Monday, Radio Vatican broadcast around the world an editorial
originally
> published in the American Jesuit journal "America", which condemned the
war.
>
> "It was a far-reaching editorial explaining to American Catholics that
> rejecting the war is not the same as betraying your country. Quite the
> opposite. War is a disaster and opposing it will help your country," said
> Arregui.
>
> Between 500 and 600 Catholic stations on four continents -- concentrated
in
> the Americas, Europe and the Near and Middle East -- broadcast Radio
> Vatican's daily coverage of the war in Italian, English, French and
Spanish.
> The news is also translated into some 20 other languages to be used by
> Catholic radio stations round the world.
>
> "We have 123 correspondents around the world, many of whom are
> correspondents for major newspapers," said Arregui.
>
> "We don't have 'war reporters' in Iraq," he added. "But our special envoys
> are even better informed of what's going on in the theatre of war: they're
> bishops, priests and monks on the spot who give us moving and occasionally
> shocking testimony of the suffering of local populations."
>
> "Here at the Vatican we're only about fifty staff, journalists and others.
> But we also rely on help from other media's correspondents who usually
make
> themselves available to us. They know that Radio Vatican isn't 'the
> competition'", he said.
>
> Radio Vatican was founded 72 years ago by Pope Pius XI, who asked the
> Italian inventor of radio, Guglielmo Marconi, to set the station up in the
> Vatican. It broadcasts on radio, satellite and over the Internet -- see
> www.Vaticanradio.org which carries a complete list of radio wavelengths.
>
> bb/co/jkb
>
> Iraq-war-Vatican
>
>





-- 
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power." (Benito Mussolini).

Chris Keene
90 The Parkway, Canvey Island, Essex SS8 0AE, England
Tel 01268 682820  Fax 01268 514164  Mobile 07801 250982