Meeting with the Vatican press for the first time on May 12, Pope Leo XIV put his introduction to the global media to surprisingly good use.
“Thank you for the work you have done and continue to do in these days, which is truly a time of grace for the church,” he told the media representatives and the staff of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication. He particularly thanked reporters “for what you have done to move beyond stereotypes and clichés through which we often interpret Christian life and the life of the church itself.”
Then the new pope used the occasion to call for the release of journalists imprisoned by autocrats around the world. “The suffering of these imprisoned journalists,” he said, “challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press.”
It was a heartening message for a global media that has endured a pretty awful year. In the United States, public trust in the media, an essential institution in a healthy democracy, reached a historic low, according to Gallup polling.
Gallup assessed the Fourth Estate’s long slide: “About two-thirds of Americans in the 1970s trusted the ‘mass media—such as newspapers, TV and radio’ either ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ to ‘[report] the news fully, accurately and fairly.’”
By Gallup’s next measurement, in 1997, this confidence had fallen to 53 percent, and it has been dropping ever since. According to the pollster: “Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do ‘not [trust it] very much,’ and 36%...saying they have no trust at all in it.” That final figure is six times greater than the level of media distrust Gallup recorded in 1972.
Professional malfeasance, reporting errors and cable-news ratings chasing have surely contributed to the loss of public trust, but in recent years, this institutional fall from grace has been accelerated by the animus for the “lamestream media” expressed by President Donald Trump. That contempt has been amplified among his supporters in Congress and on Main Streets, and also, ironically, among the “lamestreamers” themselves. Plenty of old-school media figures are among the institution’s harshest critics as the mainstream struggles to remain relevant in an era of freewheeling podcast opinionators and social media influencers whom the public—somehow—finds more reliable than gumshoe journalists.
While that reputational harm may be frustrating and can even lead to violent encounters between members of the public and professional journalists—it surely did on the infamous tourist excursion to the capital on Jan. 6, 2021—in other parts of the world, violence is not a potential but a daily menace.
The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a sobering report in February that called 2024 the deadliest year on record for journalists worldwide. At least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-brutalized Gaza Strip.
According to C.P.J.: “The number of conflicts globally—whether political, criminal, or military in nature—has doubled in the past five years, and this is reflected in the high number of deaths of journalists in nations such as Sudan, Pakistan, and Myanmar. But the toll of conflict on the press is most glaring in the unprecedented number of journalists and media workers killed in the Israel-Gaza war, 85 in 2024, and 78 in 2023.” Journalists in Gaza find themselves threatened by both sides in the conflict, imperiled by I.D.F. strikes and by Hamas militants inside the strip.
The violent incidents in 2024 “point to the increased dangers facing reporters and media workers—and the threat that poses to the flow of information worldwide.” C.P.J. reports that as of last Dec. 31, at least 361 journalists were imprisoned around the world, in China, Israel, Myanmar, Russia and many other states. The committee has also expressed grave concerns about a range of ongoing Trump administration threats to journalists in the United States.
The death toll among the people and the journalists of Gaza has continued apace so far in 2025. There is increasing evidence that Israeli forces are directly targeting Palestinian journalists for annihilation, often killing family members and colleagues alongside them. These journalists have been described by the I.D.F. as Hamas members to justify these so-called targeted assassinations, but professional associations and human rights advocates strongly contest those allegations.
Responding to two deadly attacks on journalists in Gaza in March, the International Press Institute strongly condemned “the unsubstantiated accusations and targeted killings as a flagrant attack on press freedom and demand international condemnation of the IDF for its deliberate targeting of journalists, which is prohibited under international law and constitutes a war crime.”
I.P.I. reports that since the start of the conflict in October 2023, when a Hamas terror assault on southern Israel claimed 1,200 lives, more than 170 journalists have been killed in Gaza—what I.P.I. called “the largest number of journalists to be killed in this span of time in any modern war or conflict.”
Perhaps the pope had Gaza in mind when he issued a poignant challenge to the members of the media during this first meeting with him.
The Gospel beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers” is a challenge for everyone, he told the journalists, but especially for the media. “You are at the forefront of reporting on conflicts and aspirations for peace, on situations of injustice and poverty and on the silent work of so many people striving to create a better world,” Pope Leo said. “For this reason, I ask you to choose consciously and courageously the path of communication in favor of peace.”
“We do not need loud, forceful communication but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice,” he said.
“Let us disarm words, and we will help to disarm the world.”
More from America
- Pope Leo warned about fake news. President Trump just showed us a worst-case scenario.
- Facebook, fact-checking and the case for giving legacy media another chance
- Vatican warns about fake Pope Leo quotes and videos
A deeper dive
- As Mainstream Media Faces Unprecedented Challenges, Can It Save Itself?
- ‘In Gaza, a press vest makes you a target’
- US Urged to Condemn Israel's 'Summary Execution' of Two Journalists
- IPI condemns targeted killing of two journalists in Gaza
- Alarm bells: Trump’s first 100 days ramp up fear for the press, democracy
The Weekly Dispatch takes a deep dive into breaking events and issues of significance around our world and our nation today, providing the background readers need to make better sense of the headlines speeding past us each week. For more news and analysis from around the world, visit Dispatches.
