Pope warns media about the sin of spreading fake news.
The media that focuses on scandals and spreads fake news to defame politicians risks becoming like people who have a morbid fascination with excrement, Pope Francis said in an interview published Wednesday; "I believe that the media must be very clear, very transparent, and not fall, without intending to offend, into the disease of coprophilia, which is always wanting to cover scandals, unpleasant things," he stated; "The media have their own temptations, they can be tempted by slander, and then used to slander people, to defame them, especially in the world of politics," he said. "No one has the right to do this. This is a sin and it is painful."
Reuters "Media outlets that focus on scandals and spread fake news to defame politicians risk becoming like people who have a morbid fascination with excrement," Pope Francis said in an interview published Wednesday.
The Argentinian pontiff told the Belgian Catholic weekly "Tertio" that spreading misinformation is "probably the greatest harm the media can cause" and that using communications for this purpose, instead of educating the public, amounts to a sin.
Using precise psychological terms, he said that scandal-focused media risk falling prey to coprophilia, or arousal by excrement, and consumers of this media risk committing coprophagia, the act of eating feces.
The Pope apologized for using those terms to illustrate his point while answering a question about the proper use of media.
"I believe that the media needs to be very clear, very transparent, and not fall, without intending to offend, into the disease of coprophilia, which is always wanting to cover scandals, unpleasant things, even if they are true," he stated.
"And since people have tendencies toward the disease of coprophagia, a lot of harm can be caused."
This part of the interview, which was distributed to the press with an Italian translation of the interview conducted in Spanish, contains some of the most direct language ever used by the Pope to refer to the media.
He also spoke about the danger of using the media to defame political rivals.
"The media has its own temptations; it can be tempted by slander, and then used to slander people, to defame them, especially in the world of politics," he said. "No one has the right to do this. This is a sin and it is painful."
He described misinformation as the greatest harm the media can do because "it steers opinion in only one direction and omits the other side of the truth."
The Pope's comments on misinformation follow a widespread debate in the United States about whether fake news on the internet could have influenced voters regarding the Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump.