{"id":4129,"date":"2006-12-07T13:13:57","date_gmt":"2006-12-07T13:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/h20.html"},"modified":"2006-12-07T13:13:57","modified_gmt":"2006-12-07T13:13:57","slug":"h20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/h20.html","title":{"rendered":"H20"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Vatican-"endorsed" video news service from Zenit, which as most of you know is connected to the Legionaries of Christ.<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m not sure what significance the "Vatican-endorsed" part of it means, and the article is really not clear on that. Is there money? Is it "sponsored?" Does it have the official Vatican Stamp of Approval? Will it be under the Vatican Press Office? I don’t get it, but perhaps I’m just dense.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

A Vatican-endorsed TV news service will attempt to bring to the video age the same style of church-friendly reporting associated with the Zenit News Agency, an on-line project launched in 1998 with ties to Regnum Christi, the lay branch of the Legionaries of Christ.<\/p>\n

The new \u201cH2O\u201d broadcast service \u2013 named, organizers say, for water as the symbol of life \u2013 is intended as a video news source available through the Internet, on cell phones with video capability, as well as through conventional Catholic television networks. The project was formally presented at an Oct. 10-12 world conference of Catholic television providers in Madrid, Spain, convened by the Vatican.<\/p>\n

Initially, plans call for \u201cH2O,\u201d with offices in Rome, to produce five daily news items of one and a half to two minutes each: two on the activity of the pope, two on the church in other parts of the world, and one of artistic and cultural interest. Interviews with Catholic newsmakers and, to the extent possible, overviews of new Vatican documents will also be part of the mix.<\/p>\n

The news items will be free of charge to Catholic TV networks which choose to broadcast them, and to Internet users. Initially, \u201cH2O\u201d will emphasize delivery on the Internet, attempting to reach the estimated 20 million users of Catholic web sites worldwide.<\/p>\n

snip<\/em><\/p>\n

Privately, Vatican sources told NCR<\/em> that another factor weighed in the decision to launch an official TV service. In some Vatican quarters, sources said, there has long been concern that networks such as EWTN are becoming the \u201cvoice of the church\u201d in the broadcast arena, without any oversight from church officials. The idea of a Vatican-sponsored news outlet, these sources said, thus restores a measure of \u201ccontrol\u201d over the message.<\/p>\n

This becomes a sore point, sources said, when Catholic TV outlets for one reason or another downplay aspects of the church\u2019s message. Some Vatican officials, for example, feel EWTN did not give adequate attention to the church\u2019s criticism of the Iraq war for fear of alienating conservative American Catholics. In other cases, sources said, there\u2019s concern that some Catholic TV services are run by personnel who may not be fully supportive of church teaching on issues such as sexual morality or papal authority.<\/p>\n

A preview of the H2O web site can be found here: H2O News <\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Vatican-"endorsed" video news service from Zenit, which as most of you know is connected to the Legionaries of Christ. I’m not sure what significance the "Vatican-endorsed" part of it means, and the article is really not clear on that. Is there money? Is it "sponsored?" Does it have the official Vatican Stamp of Approval?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nH20 - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/12\/h20.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"H20 - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Vatican-"endorsed" video news service from Zenit, which as most of you know is connected to the Legionaries of Christ. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}