NetOne, online meeting: is good news enough?

Is good news enough? This was the central theme of NetOne’s online meeting on Friday 9 November 2012. It linked via the internet 301 places in various nations, through the site www.net-one.org.

NetOne brings together the widest range of professionals across the media world: journalists, directors, students, lecturers, photographers, advertising consultants… Its international character and its approach to the issues and problems to do with the media, its practical emphasis, its members’ personal commitment alongside their ‘thinking’ and ‘speaking’, are the concrete expression of Chiara Lubich’s idea of universal brotherhood, the basis of NetOne’s mission: media for a united world.

The transmission was based on the challenge: ‘is good news enough’ to respond to society’s urgent questions? How can we understand or regain the notion of communicators’ work as service to others? Why does journalism (with journalists) not have a ‘purely commercial purpose’? These were the questions asked by Valter Hugo Muniz, a Brazilian journalist who highlighted how journalism ought to be aware that, before all else, the news should be at the service of human beings and of the human community.

Others also spoke during internet meeting: from Belgium there was Paolo Aversano, a researcher into Business Modelling and Smart Cities at the Free University of Brussels, and from Bari in Italy there were Emanuela Megli Armeni, a consultant in communication, and Domenica Calabrese, president of the local Igino Giordani Association. The topics dealt with included the various forms of knowledge, the new frontiers opened by the internet, the opportunities for mutual enrichment between cultures and dialogue.

Among the guests was José Andrés Sardina, a Spanish architect, who has lived and worked for several years in Cuba. He demonstrated the partial nature of what was said about the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and showed pictures of the disaster taken by the Red Cross in the City of Santiago de Cuba: 9 deaths, 5,000 houses destroyed, 27,000 homeless and more than 100,000 houses damaged, costing an estimated 88 million dollars.

This was followed by two accounts of Focolare events from eye-witness: Jessica Valle of the Social Communication Team at Genfest 2012 (a worldwide youth event in Budapest) and Michele Zanzucchi, editor-in-chief of Città Nuova, one of the organizers of LoppianoLab (at Loppiano, near Florence). This latter was a workshop looking at Italy and the challenges it faces, with a view to coming up with practical solutions.

Nedo Pozzi, Coordinator of the International Commission of NetOne, closed the online meeting by recalling what Chiara Lubich said at the United Nations (May 1997), when she underlined the importance of putting the Gospel into practice: ‘We must live! Not teaching, doing…. Let’s try to start loving, also here in the UN, one with another, one ambassador with another, one administrator with another. Let’s see what happens. It ought to bring about the presence of Christ in your midst. And what does this mean? Peace, guaranteed among you and among many others too.’ This is an invitation that, in substance, can certainly be of use to everyone involved with communication.

by Maria Rosa Logozzo

(Source: ZENIT.org, 14 November 2012)