You won't believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned

Saving you the clickbait, since the title is in on the joke:

> The pope has condemned clickbait as a “degrading” part of journalism, at a private audience with global newswires.

> “Communication must be freed from the misguided thinking that corrupts it, from unfair competition and the degrading practice of so-called clickbait,” he said on Thursday.

Clickbaits are the degrading practice the pope just condemned. I can sorta see the humour in this one

The problem with clickbait and entirely uninformative headlines like this is that sometimes they are so egregious that they discourage reading further, as one balks at having been so obviously lured by the bait. It's only through the comments section that one discovers otherwise. This hyperlink would have remained entirely unfollowed.

I think only reasonable action on this article is to excommunicate both The Guardian and the author.

I must be dreaming. The catholic church is one of the most duplicitous and morality corrupt organisation I can think of and they manage to complain about something that is similar to what they do but in a tamer form. Because what he is basically saying is that people shouldn't lie. I wish the pope would use his moral on himself because he is basically selling lies for a living.

It's interesting to see the media focus on this part of the pope's speech. Part of the degradation of journalism in the media is choosing which narratives to tell.

In the Vatican's press release on this story [1], they started with journalists in Gaza and Ukraine [2]. In fact the image they used for the story was a journalist in Gaza with blood on their camera. They continued [3] with the political attacks on journalists, such as those by Trump and Netanyahu [4], among others.

That the Guardian, alongside a lot of major media, turned this into a joke tells us a lot about how media chooses to shape the stories they tell us. Another example of the Guardian manipulating stories comes from how they report on Ukraine vs Gaza, for example in https://www.instagram.com/p/DPOhhduDALe/.

[1] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-10/pope-journal...

[2] 'Pope Leo on Thursday paid homage to journalists who are working on the front lines of conflict. “If today we know what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and every other land bloodied by bombs, we largely owe it to them.”'

[3] In light of this, the Pope reiterated his long-standing appeal for the release of journalists who have been unjustly detained or persecuted. "Doing the work of a journalist can never be considered a crime," he insisted. "It is a right that must be protected."

[4] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-kills-5-palestinian-jo...

Since we now have the technology to both 1) detect whether a headline is clickbait and 2) summarize and interpret articles, I'm surprised we haven't yet seen platforms automatically "de-clickbait" titles. Or, they could simply "spoil" the clickbait title with a concise blurb.

Humorous title, but something quite positive.

I wonder whether one can take the title as implicit criticism, that while clickbait is wrong in general, it can also be used to bring attention to something important.

The whole missive from which that comes.[1] This was addressed to the Media Innovation Network conference. (Main topics of the conference: Artificial Intelligence, News in a Post-Truth World, Opportunities for new revenues).

The world needs free, rigorous and objective information. In this context, it is worth remembering Hannah Arendt’s warning that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 474).

...

As Pope Francis stressed, “We need courageous entrepreneurs, courageous information engineers, so that the beauty of communication is not corrupted” (Address to Participants in the Jubilee of Communication, 25 January 2025). Communication must be freed from the misguided thinking that corrupts it, from unfair competition and from the degrading practice of so-called clickbait. News agencies are at the frontlines, and are called upon to act in the current communications environment according to principles – unfortunately not always shared – that unite the economic sustainability of the company with the protection of the right to accurate and balanced information.

No need to comment on that.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/octo...

[2] https://minds-international.com/conferences/

It’s been a long time since I’ve considered writers at major news outlets as being ‘journalists’. They’re, at best, a pack of vultures.