Today the world celebrates Press Freedom Day.
The Australian Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste, who together with Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, are facing trial in Cairo accused of helping the Muslim Brotherhood released, though his father, a very strong message in favour of press freedom.
In a message for the occasion UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said that 14 journalists have been killed so far this year, many in the crossfire of armed battle. Since 1992, more than 1,000 have been killed - almost one a week.
The plight of journalists is bad in many countries. Since 2008 over 450 journalists were forced to leave their countries. Last year there were 200 journalists in prison around the world. Journalistic freedom is threatened in many countries.
But , you may ask, what does this have to do with Jesus’s so-called ‘wife’?
Just before Easter the media massively diffused a story saying that the 7th or 8th century document asserting that Jesus had a wife was authentic.
The story was a re-hash of a September 2012, announcement by Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King about the discovery of a Coptic gospel text on a papyrus fragment that contained the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife . . .' " The original story did the media rounds, gave rise to many discussions and newspaper articles and the,n like all other stories, was forgotten to be resurrected just before Christians celebrated the Resurrection.
Many scholars described the document as a forgery but the Harvard Theological Review recently published a series or article saying that the document was authentic. The story was then picked by the media which presented it for popular consumption.
On May 1, Jerry Pattengali published a piece on The Wall Street Journal titled “How the ‘Jesus’ Wife’ Hoax Fell Apart”. He wrote that “last week the story [of Jesus’ ‘wife’] began to crumble faster than an ancient papyrus exposed in the windy Sudan.” The story can be accessed from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304178104579535540828090438?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304178104579535540828090438.html
I will not go into his argument as in this commentary for Press Freedom Day I am not interested whether the story is true or not. The point I want to make is a different one.
On Press Freedom Day many decry the oppressive regimes which limit freedom of the press. Others show how even democratic governments are not forthcoming as they are expected to be in safeguarding press freedom. All this is true.
However there is another threat to journalistic integrity and press freedom which does not come from governments but comes from the market. The increased presence of market drive and poll driven journalism is a threat to press freedom as it reduces news just to a commodity and humiliates journalists to peddlers of saleable products instead of servers of people’s right for information. As a consequence bias, sensationalism and trivialisation are galore.
Let me tie to the coverage of the story about Jesus’ ‘wife’.
The allegation that Jesus had a wife is more sensational and sellable that that he did not have a wife. So the story stating the former is heavily diffused while the latter is left on the margins.
One has to remember that at the basis of journalism there is an inconvenient factor called ‘the truth’. It does not always sell papers and increase rating but without it journalism loses all its worth. Journalists who do not respect the truth before all else reduce themselves to the modern version of the medieval court jester.
This is not something I augur on Press Freedom Day.