VATICAN CITY
Catholic Herald (UK)
By EMER MCCARTHY on Tuesday, 14 October 2014
Under Francis, transparency, efficiency and austerity have become the new catchwords at the Vatican. The Pope has set up numerous secretariats and councils to oversee reform. They are focusing on the Vatican bank, the administration of Vatican departments and, last but not least, the Vatican’s various media outlets. These outlets include the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican Television Centre, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the Vatican publishing house and Vatican Radio. The commission overseeing reform of the Vatican’s communication system is led by Lord Patten of Barnes. While the former chairman of the BBC Trust says the commission will not be engaging in “a running commentary” on what it is doing, it would appear that Vatican Radio is right in the eye of the storm.
A lot has been said and written recently about Vatican Radio: that it takes the largest chunk out of the budget without generating any cash in return; that it is the Vatican’s largest employer; that its cost and its size do not correlate to the number of people it reaches; and that the medium of radio is out of date. Some of these claims are true and some deliberately misleading. So let’s separate fact from fiction.
When it was set up in 1931 by Guglielmo Marconi, Vatican Radio was at the cutting edge of modern communications. Fast forward 80-odd years and radio broadcasting has shifted from analogue to online digital and satellite broadcasting. This transition has come at a cost and that goes some way to explaining the rising budget deficit in recent years. Yet the change means that every event that takes place in the Vatican is now accessible to people worldwide at the touch of a screen – on a smartphone, tablet or home computer. This leap forward is entirely thanks to Vatican Radio’s web team. What’s more, the commentaries in various languages that accompany live Vatican television feeds, made available to media worldwide, are all provided by Vatican Radio staff.
It has been suggested that Vatican Radio should seek to generate more cash through advertising. In 2009, Vatican Radio began broadcasting adverts on its FM channel, which covers Rome and Lazio. These are understandably vetted to ensure they meet ethical standards that the Holy See seeks to promote. This narrows the field of potential advertisers and the possibility of making serious money. But the idea of introducing advertising across Vatican Radio’s 44 different language programmes is unfeasible. The majority of Vatican Radio programmes are re-broadcast by smaller, poorer partner radio stations across the globe. They are provided free of charge because, quite simply, we cannot put a price on proclaiming the Gospel.
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