AFRICAN EXAMPLE HUMILIATES US MEDIA

     Few Americans are familiar with the African nation of Malawi. A landlocked country of 16 million people in subtropical Africa, the country rarely gets much international press. The reason for this is that the Corporate Media only focuses on negative news and not much of this comes from Malawi. The country actually attracts a decent number of tourists; safari hunters and tropical explorers, mostly. Malawi also has beautiful beaches along freshwater Lake Nyasa which is filled with exotic tropical fish.

      The news story from that country today has to do with this very issue. Recently, Catholic media began expanding into the country and earlier this week Information Minister Nicholas Dausi visited one of the highest-rated radio studios where he praised Catholic media efforts and pledged continued government support.

      Dausi spoke to a crowd at St. Mary's Parish in Karonga. He thanked the local bishops for their efforts to elevate cultural standards and challenged the crowd not to "sink to being brought down by continual negativity" such as the Western Media imports into the nation. Bishop Mtumbuka held a Mass that afternoon, which Dausi attended. During his sermon the Bishop stated that

        "I would like to challenge media outlets and those working within them to be more professional. We thank God for the gift of all communication tools. However, we are challenging ourselves to use them more effectively. We can do much better than we are doing with our media. Let us offer the message of Faith for the Glory of God and the development of our nation."

       Visiting Bishop George Tambala also spoke at the Mass. "Pope Francis challenges us all to break the vicious cycle of anxiety and stem the spiral of fear that results from a constant focus on bad news such as war, terrorism, scandals, and all sorts of human failures. Francis' recent message challenges that all media practitioners should search for an open and creative style of communication that never seeks to glorify evil. Instead, we should concentrate on solutions and seek to inspire a positive and responsible response on the part of media recipients."

         ETWN reported this story but---for obvious reasons---the US Mainstream Media mostly slunk away from it in disgraced shame. And this isn't even the first time that Malawi's cultural elites have made ours look like complete chumps. The difference is simply that Malawi is striving to put the Christian social ideal into actual practice; something that our society used to do. It should be noted that Malawi's crime rate is actually lower than the US, as is their divorce rate. They also have such a insignificant drug abuse problem that WHO doesn't even list Malawi as an 'at-risk' country, unlike the US. This in spite of the fact that their GDP is far lower than ours.

        Maybe there's actually something to this whole idea of 'faith-based' government after all.