about the author

 

 

Sergio Tripi

Sergio Tripi PhD, journalist and writer, was the Representative to Italy of the UN endorsed University for Peace from 1996 to 2001. He is the author of two books and over one hundred articles on the ethical and social issues of our time. Former CEO, he worked with top management responsibilities for thirty years with multinational companies in Italy and in the USA.

He is founder and president of the Associazione Culturale dei Triangoli e della Buona Volontà Mondiale (Triangles and World Goodwill Cultural Association), a charity organization established in Rome in 1979 that works in the fields of education and information for the expansion of consciousness. In the year 2000 the Association launched the Good News Agency, a newsletter published in English on one Friday and in Italian the next and distributed free of charge through the internet to 10,000 media and editorial journalists in 54 countries and to 3,000 NGOs and 1,700 high schools, colleges and universities. It carries positive and constructive news relating to the work of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations, with the aim of persuading media to report also this type of information and thus creating a more balanced public opinion.
In 2001 the Association launched the Ethical Code of the Media, with the aim of increasing the level of responsibility of the world of communication. The Code has been endorsed so far by over 130 international organizations and renowned people from all over the world.
In June 2002 the Association was associated with the United Nations Department of  Public Information, and in December 2002 it was recognized by UNESCO as “an actor of the global movement for a culture of peace”. In 2003, with the active participation of several Rotary clubs in Italy, the Association launched the campaign “Let us bring Good News Agency into the schools!”. This campaign is being expanded in other countries.
All of the Association's activities are offered free of charge and are the result of an all-volunteer work of all participants. 

Ethical Code of the Media

In 2001 the publishing Association launched the Ethical Code of the Media, with the aim of increasing the level of responsibility of the world of communication. The Code has been endorsed so far by over 130 international organizations and renowned people from all over the world. It is posted in eight languages on its web site www.goodnewsagency.org
 
The building of a just and peaceful world is man’s duty, just as its destruction could be determined by man.

In a democratic environment which tends to assign to the citizen-elector a growing responsibility for the directions of social development, the formation of a public opinion which is widely aware of the main events that happen in the world is the key for directing the efforts of humanity towards a global village based on unity in diversity and on sharing, fundamental qualities for the development of a responsible and sustainable social life.
In this perspective, the importance of the media is fundamental and the consequent social responsibility of publishers cannot be based any longer on the only element which has so far been unquestioned: the search for company profits through the maximum possible diffusion of the media. This aim has so far prevailed over every other consideration, thus taking from the media the responsibility for the formation of an aware and balanced public opinion.

In pursuing the maximum possible company profits, the media have placed the accent on the dissemination of sensational and dramatic news, which appeal to the characteristics of a public seen as a tangled mass of emotions and mortify the interest of another part of the public, which has a quite different vision of life and of the information which describes it. This situation in the world of information is the most obvious evidence of a human activity that, with some enlightened exceptions, sacrifices quality and balance on the altar of quantity and immediate profit, ignoring those responsibilities of an ethical kind which that very activity of itself implicitly confers.

Today, however, the media cannot continue any longer to overlook the positive and constructive occurrences among that part of humanity–estimated at between 10 and 15 percent of the citizen-elector-contributors in the developed countries–which has by now adopted a social behaviour in harmony with the fundamental values of a fair and sustainable social development. To give voice also to the events which indicate in the world the response of humanity to the greatest problems of our time is a responsibility of the media which can no longer be put off, in order to allow public opinion to be formed on the basis of a range of information corresponding to all aspects of the reality in which we live.

Therefore, as is the custom for many other categories of great importance in social life, the public opinion consisting of that 10-15 percent of the population orientated towards the construction of a just and sustainable global village asks the media to adopt and respect the deontological code here laid down.

Ethical Code of the Media
1. It is the moral responsibility of the media to pursue the aim of disseminating information on every aspect of the reality in which we live.
2. The media must disseminate information with respect and consideration for all the public.
3. The information should be organized by distributing the “weight” of the different sectors so as to respect the right to knowledge of important social groups.
4. The information must reflect reality with a variety of news that mirrors the components of reality itself to the extent to which they define it.
5. The information must seek, as far as possible, the causes of the events in determining the behaviour of man.
6. The media have the privilege and the task of also setting the events reported in the context of their correspondence to the principles of responsibility and the search for the common good.
7. It is the privilege, task and responsibility of the media to do their best to emphasize the connections between the most significant world events.
The Ethical Code of the Media will be presented to the publishers of the world’s press, radio and television when it has been signed by a large number of signatories, such as:
-  organizations of the United Nations;
-  non-governmental organizations;
-  voluntary service associations;
-  journalists for whom the mandate of the editor represents a restraint;
-  enlightened editors who have already showed agreement with the values of the Code;
-  people who recognize the necessity and validity of the Code.
 
To express your agreement with this initiative, include your data here below and send this page to Good News Agency: s.tripi@tiscalinet.it
I support the Ethical Code of the Media:
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