God the Father: You are the truth. And you have called us as journalists to a profoundly important task. Tell the truth. But to do that, we must find it. And as we chase it, it comes in many parts.

A group tells us one thing. Another, just the opposite, another something else. Give us the wisdom, understanding, and skill to know which parts are true…and then put the right parts together in the right order. While doing our job, we are often manipulated, cheated, managed and slandered. May we not be discouraged. Give us patience, guide us with common sense, protect us from pessimism.

Help us to be the voice of the voiceless… To be skeptical but never cynical… Rightly angry at the mistakes we expose, but never vengeful. Keep our hearts from despairing and give us the courage and steadfastness to go places and ask the questions and shine the light that our readers and viewers need to make sense of this too fallen world. Protect us from harm while we do our job.

But may we also realize that in doing our jobs, we often cause harm. Make us humbly aware of the power of words and images and help us to choose them carefully, always seeking to minimize harm, never exploiting facts, skewing history, or preconceiving our biases to further a personal agenda. That we admit and correct our mistakes promptly, learning from them.

But oh God, may we especially realize that not all news is bad news. May love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control – what your word calls the fruit of your spirit – surround us everywhere and are part of the Good News that we are also responsible for telling. Let our reports inform, not inflame. Let them encourage, not discourage.

Let’s be sensitive instead of sensationalist… Let’s reflect reason, not ridicule… Let’s be balanced, not bitter. May the words we write and the images we show describe not distort. Help us to educate and even entertain… but never to seduce.

May our power never be tainted by our pride. That we understand that it is more important to be fair than first… That respect is more important than grades and that truthfulness and honesty and compassion and integrity are the traits that we must pursue in ourselves as much and as rigorously as we can. we do it in others.

To be the journalists you have called us to be, I pray, Father, in the newsrooms, television stations, radio studios, and newsrooms of this earth, to impress each of us of us that there is an Absolute and Immutable Truth with a capital T that we need to open our hearts to hear.

May you plant Your Truth in us so that later we can tell it to others. Finally, Father, may we be reminded daily that with great power comes great responsibility. May we please you in the way we exercise it.

We ask this in the strong name of your Son, Jesus Christ, who is the Truth, the Life and the Way. Amen.