Introduction
The theme for the World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2021 is “Information as a public good” per UNESCO, and the day was observed in Nigeria as elsewhere according to tradition. It is a day to Promote the Freedom of the Press, to Fight Against Oppressive or Tyrannical Governments that seek to curtail this fundamental right, and also a day to honour our fallen heroes – innocent journalists like Dele Giwa, Bagauda Kaltho and Chinedu Offoaro who lost their lives at the hands of brutal dictators or “disappeared” on account of simply discharging their duties! We pay tribute to the likes of Tunde Thompson and others who spent years in jail, for simply doing their work as journalists during the dark days of military dictatorship in Nigeria. We pay tribute to functionaries of the Newswatch Magazine, Tell Magazine, the Guardian, Tribune, Punch, Champion, Vanguard, and Daily Trust Newspaper among other print media outfits that risked everything in the course of providing sp
(Part II)
An antidote (not the only one) to the rise of consumerism is Catholic Social Doctrine. From the beginning of the modern Catholic social thought in the pathbreaking encyclical of Pope Leo XIII entitled Rerum Novarum (A New Order) in 1892, popes have cautioned that growing consumerism has been a threat to Human Dignity, Solidarity, the Preferential Option for the Poor, the Common God, and, more recently, Care for Creation. The emphasis on accumulating more and more wealth and consuming more and more goods goes against the Catholic social tradition, bolstered by empirical research by social scientists, that human happiness and fulfilment is fostered more by human relationships, especially friendship, rather than material possessions.