M.I.S.N.A. - Missionary International Service News Agency
When, several years ago, a group of missionary congregations decided to give life to Misna, it was the potential represented by the capillary network of missionaries in the world’s South - in addition to the desire to “give voice to the voiceless” - that spurred them on. This primary source, integrated by civil society representatives, relief workers and volunteers, has enabled Misna (Missionary International Service News Agency) to provide daily news ‘from, about and for’ the 'world’s Souths', not just in the geographical sense, since December 1997. Journalistically, the news agency – which is often described as ‘alternative’ or as providing ‘counter-information’ – has the primary aim of integrating and sometimes also ‘correcting’ the ‘genetically modified information’ put into circulation by large global news systems that have a different perception of the world. People, conflicts, territories and events that are often forgotten and marginalised – including the 'young Churches' that, together with other men and women of good will, often play a vital role in promoting human rights, peace, justice and development – are both the source and the primary subject of our work, which aims to build “dialogue and bridges”, avoiding flippant and damaging sensationalism. A sense of responsibility and sensitivity are indispensable in the task of informing a world that is deaf, or at least distracted, and often steeped in prejudice rooted in ignorance, about another world that is alive, still capable of taking initiative and sensitive to values that tend to be forgotten in the West, which has been maltreated and exploited for centuries and yet is vibrant and smiling even in the face of misfortune and misery. To MISNA, the “PETER MAP” is the real measure of our planet. The abundant and ‘authentic’ information coming from its informal network of sources across the five continents is collated, verified and packaged in Rome by a group of highly specialised,lay professional journalists led by the editor-in-chief Pietro Mariano Benni (at MISNA after previous international news agency and press esperience) and Father Cesare Baldi, missionary with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME), already in Chad and in Ivory Coast and now Misna assistant editor. The publisher Misna Srl is made up of the General Direction and Italian Provinces of the missionary institutes, their Conference (Cimi) and Sermis (Missionary Service); Father Venanzio Milani, a Comboni missionary with experience in ‘Mani Tese’ and in Congo, is chairman of the board of administrators. With its multi-lingual news bulletin (over 15 million ‘hits’ per month), Misna wants to be not only a classic example of a “collective work of human intellect”, as indicated in the institutive law of the 'Italian journalists register', but also a paradigm of social communication, stressing the ethical component of the journalistic profession, in synergy with the principal values of the missionary activity at its fullest and most ‘inclusive’ level.
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