Manipulations of the Media

The recent uproar of Muslims throughout the world against Pope Benedict's remarks had me thinking that the new Pope is quite orthodox and even more confrontational than what I assumed him to be from previous literature. I, like many of the people around the world, fell in for what the media flashed out all over the place.

As it turns out the quotes of Pope Benedict though absolutely spoken by him were in fact within a context of reference to a passage from some medieval text. He simply quoted the text and was having a dialogue based on the same. There was no malice or ill intention from the Pope at all.

The media has been well known to "make news" out of basically anything, however demeaning and unprofessional it may be. Most of the headlines in the papers have similar sources. They simply take the few words from an entire article that would turn out to be eye-catching or a double meaning and print it out in bold as the topic of the article.

For decades now the church has been a non confrontational leader in the new world. At many a occasion the church has even apologised for mistakes of the past. There is no reason to believe that the church holds such views at all. Unfortunately the reaction to such concocted media statements from the Muslim community has been far from encouraging. If it were the reactions from a few uneducated people I would'nt have been surprised however we have national leaders who are reacting with such childlike tantrums that I fear that dialogue is not something in their minds at all. At least world leaders and the educated masses should have confirmed the sources of such an article and found out the entire text of the speech given by Pope Benedict before reacting in any way. Especially considering that other people of the community do not overreact.

It is truly shameful that Middle East leaders have not come out to calm the extremists. And ofcourse regardless of what their intentions are I am sure that Pope Benedict will come out with a an apology of any sort or form that the Muslim community demands so that the world is a more peaceful place for all of us.

For those who care to read the speech. This is the link here

Technorati Tags: Vatican Pope Benedict speech Muslims