Do purveyors of news – ‘Reporters’ – care more about truth – or the message they want to promote? Peter Sammons concludes his examination of species journalist …..
Two months ago in this column I commented on the controlled and determined release of fear into our western societies (see THE FEAR FACTOR: https://christiancomment.org/2020/06/25/the-fear-factor/ ) I then questioned: “So-called “news” is today increasingly about manipulating emotion. We may well ask, what is “news”? What is propaganda? What is “entertainment”? And have these three now converged? What “news” stories will we see played out in terms of social engineering and emotional “harp-playing”? What “stories” (and perhaps we should emphasize that word!) are promulgated today with the objective of engaging and modeling our emotions, along with our minds? Or even in preference to our minds? Yet the media complain about fake news!”
The problem today is not so much to spot fake news, it is much more about trying to characterize it and establish whose agenda it serves and promotes.
Social Media
The changing make up of Western newsrooms is also impacting views about objectivity. Increasingly, “objective” viewpoints are seen as “white” and “male”, and representative of a species of person who does not in reality exist. The “view from nowhere” is presented as for a person (probably white and male) who is a figment of someone else’s imagination!
News consumers (is this the right word?) are immersed on the web with its highly partisan content that whets appetite for more opinionated stories. A 2018 scientific study found that 75% of Americans could easily tell news from opinion in their preferred outlet, but only 43% could on Twitter or Facebook. What is true in America is likely to be replicated everywhere. We have not even begun to think about China as a culture for self-grown “facts”. But we do remember the huge irony of Communist Russia’s daily newspaper Pravda – meaning truth!
Today, as Ad revenues leak away to search engines and social networks, newspapers rely increasingly on paying subscribers. Unlike advertisers, these news consumers actively seek opinions – preferably matching their own. ‘News’ content is increasingly therefore and echo-chamber of already partisan views – and this is true of both the left and the right.
As The Economist notes, disenchanted with objectivity, some journalists have settled on a new ideal – “moral clarity”. One commentator recently stated the necessity “to abandon the appearance of objectivity as the aspirational journalistic standard. And for reporters to focus instead on being fair and telling the truth, as best one can, based on the given context and the available facts.”
One Man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, didn’t they used to say? Today one man’s truth is another man’s lies! The post-Christian nexus is that no one can agree on what is objective ‘fact’ or ‘truth’ – an unintended but solid consequence of post-modernism?
Truth personified
In the Bible truth is personified. Truth is not a concept. Nor is it a philosophy. Nor indeed is it the product of diligent enquiry and objectivity. No, truth is a Man. “I am the way and the truth and the life” says Jesus. We focus here on truth: Jesus is the personification of holiness – and holiness is of God. Jesus, then, is the personification of God. Jesus is truth made flesh. And the World largely resists Him because it prefers the realm of lies – the Bible paints this in terms of light versus darkness. People prefer darkness and do not want to come to the light (John 3:20). Nothing that Jesus says can be untrue, whether it is comfortable to us or uncomfortable to us.
The Bible does not provide a systematic account of the nature of truth either in theological or philosophical terms. Nevertheless great prominence is given to the idea of truth because God is the God of truth (Ps 31:5; 108:4; 146:6) Who speaks and judges truly (Ps 57:3; 96:13). God is the God of all truth because He is the Creator, and it is impossible for Him to lie (Heb 6:18).
All things exist because of His will (Eph 1:11). His will is the ultimate truth of every proposition or fact. Because of God’s will the stars continue in their orbits (Ps 147:4) and Paul and his fellow voyagers arrived safely (Acts 27:24), even though God could have willed otherwise.
Whilst a general account of truth may be inferred from what we discover in the Bible, the focus of Scripture is upon Salvation, the revealed gospel truth of God’s redeeming grace through Messiah Jesus. This is the truth that Messiah and the apostles proclaimed (John 8:44-46; 18:37; Rom 9:1; 2 Cor 4:2), which was foreshadowed in the Old Testament (1 Peter 1: 10-12) and witnessed to by the Holy Spirit (John 16:13). So Messiah brings truth (John 1:17) and the Holy Spirit leads into all truth (John 16:13).
Who rules the country?
Those of us who have long memories – and teeth – remember the plaintive rhetorical question of Prime Minister Ted Heath in his battle with Miners’ leader Joe Gormley; “who rules the country?” Ultimately the miners’ strike was characterized in those terms. Surprising as it may seem, there are journalists who think it is their right and destiny to rule the country. First, many broadcasters see themselves as the permanent opposition “party”. In his 2004 book “What the Media Are Doing to our Politics” John Lloyd stated that broadcasters act “as an opposition, not so much as to one part or the other, but to government: even, to politics. They have done this in three ways, by becoming openly abrasive and cynical; by assuming the position of the opposition; and by making little or no examination of the deeper biases than the purely party political” (page 126).
John Lloyd goes on: “the idea that journalism would be better at governing the country has a long, if largely subterranean history.” Lloyd cites an 1886 essay by W.J.Stead, Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, where Stead opined that the development of the press had allowed journalists to thoroughly understand public opinion, and looked forward to the day when ‘one of our great newspaper proprietors’ would become ‘an engine for social reform and means of government’.
He may have been a century ahead of his time, but Stead’s ideas have greater traction today. The MSM perceives itself in precisely that way; opinion formation, aggregation, and processing.
MSM shadily sees its future role as presenting complex cases to the public, leading opinion (as any good barrister might) and then facilitating ‘voting’ via new technologies available. The endless public voting on Love Island, Strictly Ballroom, I’m a Celebrity et al, are all prototypes of this desire to mould opinion and govern elections. The recent C-19 ‘pandemic’ advanced this agenda mightily with MSM being seen as being a governmental delivery mechanism. But in the great government-media waltz of informing and shaping public C-19 responses, it is no longer entirely clear who is actually leading the dance.
Who rules “the news”?
The struggle to acquire truth in our modern culture will only grow more difficult in the future as our society ever more determinedly rejects Jesus – the Truth. That’s the bad news. But the good news remains that He is coming back, and today we do seem to be living in times where we are hearing ever more insistent shofar blasts. As Jesus said, when you hear these things begin to happen, lift up your heads, for you know your redemption draws nigh (Luke 21:28). Praise God indeed!
Peter Sammons is commissioning editor at Christian Publications International. He is author of the books “Rebel Church” (2013), “The Prince of Peace” (2015) and “Three Days and Three Nights – That Changed the World” (co-authored with David Serle) in 2019: https://christian-publications-int.com/default-32.html?ID=176 .
Recent Comments