Pope Calls on TV to Improve Its Image : Media: The pontiff says television is ‘a public trust.’ He urges governments, viewers and the industry itself to police it.

Pope John Paul II took a hard look at television Monday and saw a bad picture.

He called on viewers, governments, parents and the industry itself to police and improve a medium he described as “a public trust” that must “serve the well-being of society as a whole. . . .”

“In fulfilling its public responsibilities, the television industry should develop and observe a code of ethics which includes a commitment to serving the needs of families and to promoting values supportive of family life.

“Media councils, with members from both the industry and the general public, are also a highly desirable way of making television more responsive to the needs and values of its audience,” John Paul said in a written message released Monday.

The Roman Catholic Church supports freedom of speech and of the press, John Paul noted, but believes that individuals, families and society itself have a right to privacy, public decency and the protection of basic moral values.

“Public authorities are invited to set and enforce reasonable ethical standards for programming which will foster the human and religious values on which family life is built, and will discourage whatever is harmful,” John Paul said.

The papal remarks were issued in the context of his visit to the Vatican Press Room on the feast of St. Francis de Sales, a 17th-Century French bishop and Reformation preacher whom the Catholic Church calls the patron saint of journalists.

Looking fit and relaxed, the 73-year-old pontiff reiterated longstanding desires to visit the Holy Land and China. John Paul also stressed the importance he attaches to his planned midyear trip to Lebanon, and he again decried barbarism in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

His most pointed thoughts on the media, though, came in the text of remarks--”Television and the Family: Guidelines for Good Viewing”--prepared for a church World Social Communications Day in May.

The Pope, whose own TV viewing is restricted to the evening news and an occasional soccer game, called television the “spearhead of a communications revolution” that can help draw families and communities together.

But there is another side, the Pope warned: “Television can also harm family life--by propagating degrading values and models of behavior; by broadcasting pornography and graphic depictions of brutal violence; by inculcating moral relativism and religious skepticism; by spreading distorted, manipulative accounts of news events and current issues; by carrying exploitative advertising that appeals to base instincts, and by glorifying false visions of life that obstruct the realization of mutual respect, of justice and of peace.”

Additionally, he said, TV can “isolate family members in their private worlds, cutting them off from authentic interpersonal relations; it can also divide the family by alienating parents from children, and children from parents.”

Besides being discriminating in what they watch themselves, it is up to parents to shape their children’s viewing habits, John Paul said.

“Forming children’s viewing habits will sometimes mean simply turning off the television set. . . . Parents who make regular, prolonged use of television as a kind of electronic baby-sitter surrender their role as the primary educators of their children,” John Paul said.

Self-regulation by the TV industry is a key step toward a healthier product, in the papal view.

“Television personnel all have serious moral responsibilities to the families that make up such a large part of their audience. . . . Recognizing the influence of the medium in which they work, they should promote sound moral and spiritual values,” John Paul said.