Reforming Journalism

Marvin Olasky

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781629956688
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Marvin Olasky, editor in chief of World magazine, lays out the foundational principles, practical techniques, and history of journalism, showing us how to become citizen-reporters and discerning consumers of news.

PART 1

JOURNALISTIC FOUNDATIONS

1

Two Countries, One Hope

THE TWO COUNTRIES with the largest Christian populations are the United States and China. They are also the two countries that can work together for a peaceful world or plunge us into World War III several decades from now. In both countries, journalism has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

In the United States, a Pew Foundation survey found eight out of ten Americans believe journalists are not independent and are “often influenced by powerful people and organizations.” Seven out of ten say “stories are often inaccurate” and journalists “try to cover up their mistakes.” Six out of ten say journalists “don’t care about the people they report on.” Other surveys show nine out of ten Americans distrust reporters.

China has not had similar polling on attitudes toward journalists, but it seems Central Television reporter/producer Wang Qinglei spoke for many in December 2013, when he resigned, saying journalists had become “manipulated clowns” and had lost “credibility and influence.” Chinese reporters have a partial excuse: if they do not satisfy officials, prison terms await them. American reporters very rarely go to jail, but if they don’t satisfy those with political power, unemployment might be around the corner.

How did we get to this point? The United States and China have very different journalistic traditions, but in both countries reporters often do public relations for those who say they are fighting oppression, but in practice oppress those without political power. The deeper question is why. Certainly, individual journalists seek influence, but what are the justifications for doing so?

Materialist journalists in both the United States and China have no belief in absolute truth. They believe man is mammal or machine, but certainly not made in God’s image. The logical end of such thinking in the United States is the belief that (within minimal legal structures) we should be free to do whatever we feel like doing at the moment—whether or not that creates long-term happiness for us or misery for others. The logical end of such thinking within communism is that all truth is class truth, and we should obey the vanguard of the working class to achieve economic progress and social cohesion.

Most reporters do not argue for those propositions; they assume them. That’s the nature of a worldview: we wear glasses with lenses that help us to see in particular ways that then seem natural and even unquestionable. Academics use the word metanarrative to describe these big understandings that form the basis for framing individual stories. I’ve called them macro-stories, since they provide a grounding for smaller stories.

We’ll look first at the United States. Through most of the eighteenth century, newspapers in America—then ruled by the king of England—usually printed the macro-story I’ve called “the official story.” The job of a journalist was to trust the king and his royal governors, print what officials wanted printed, and not print anything that would hurt the officials’ reputation. The big idea was that if people lose confidence in officials, anarchy will result and everyone will be hurt.

Late in the century, most of the founders of the new United States and most of the editors were Christians. They believed the Bible’s teaching about creation, fall, and redemption. They understood from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans that all people “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” They also knew Christ redeems many and allows us to live better lives and build a better society.

American journalists favored a system of checks and balances. They did not like monarchy, because it could lead to tyranny. They did not like aristocracy, because it could result in feudalism. They also didn’t want democracy by itself, because it could lead to “mobocracy,” rule by crowd psychology and the passions of the moment. They criticized those who would make idols out of any person or institution.

American political leaders and journalists created a mixed government, featuring a separation of powers. They made the president an executive with only a four-year term. They created a Senate they hoped would be an aristocracy of experience and wisdom. They created the House of Representatives as the voice of democracy. They foresaw a time when the executive and the legislative branches might join forces to expand their own power, at the expense of liberty, so they created a Supreme Court that would prevent or at least curtail such power grabbing.

Political leaders also supported one more check on corruption: journalism. As Thomas Jefferson, author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776, said a decade later, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Journalists were the last line of defense against tyranny.

During much of the nineteenth century, many American journalists proceeded boldly because they embraced the Bible’s news story of God saving sinners through Christ’s sacrifice. They saw themselves as representatives of the people generally. They gained their education at street level, rather than in classrooms or at suite level. They listened skeptically to the words of the powerful and often produced stories about corruption, based on their understanding of universal sin affecting the ruled and rulers alike.

In twentieth-century America, though, more journalists started to disbelieve in the good news of Christ redeeming us. They saw man as naturally good, not corrupt. They asked: if we’re good, what makes us bad? Many started writing about “oppression.” The villains were external influences, such as corporations or churches or schools or guns or meat or something. Within the oppression macro-story, liberal and radical heroes led the way in overturning barriers, such as tradition or property or bourgeois consciousness. They fought “reactionaries” who opposed change. They idolized “progressive” elements and demonized others.

In the twenty-first century, a strange phenomenon has emerged: the official and oppression stories have merged. The original impetus for O&O (official and oppression) late in the twentieth century was the civil rights movement, in which the federal government (prodded by journalists) overturned centuries of oppression and helped to bring about equal rights for African-Americans. That was good, but many journalists went from that triumph to seeing officials such as President Barack Obama as the great helmsmen who would create a radically new and wonderful America.

O&O journalists praised officials who fought a war on poverty by giving people money, whether they worked or not. They praised officials who expanded secular and often atheistic schools and colleges. They praised officials who promoted abortion. O&O journalists attacked those who got in the way of “progress.” They placed most Christians in that category.

Many American journalists are now “establishment revolutionaries”—enjoying affluence, but feeling radical as they criticize American traditions. Some others, including those at World, challenge them, but Christian journalists are very much a minority.

That’s certainly the case in China as well. China’s journalistic history is much longer than America’s. China had news written on bones or rocks more than two thousand years ago. Chinese reporters recorded King Xuan’s death in 782 B.C. and the political successes of Qin Shi Huang in 219 B.C.

The earliest newspaper in world history, the Kaiyuan Gazette, appeared in China between A.D. 713 and 742. Others, during the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279), also presented good news from the imperial standpoint: nothing about mutinies and peasant uprisings. Floods, droughts, and locust plagues also went unreported because these signs of heaven’s disappointment could weaken the emperor.

During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), every Chinese province had a provincial courier officer whose task was to transmit military news and distribute imperial gazettes and notices that contained edicts, news of appointments, imperial examination results, punishments and imprisonments, and attempts to fight corruption—such as the “Ban on Acceptance of Advantages,” the “Ban on Fixed Rice Price,” and the “Ban on Revenge.”

Freedom of the press? No. Penalties were severe for “giving inappropriate comments on current affairs, writing misleading books, spreading fallacies,” and passing along any information the emperor deemed secret. The emperor’s office could publish notices on big sheets of yellow paper, but all others had to use a lesser size of white paper. Peasants who rebelled could not afford to produce newspapers, but they reported war news and political declarations on wooden boards and pieces of bamboo.

During China’s last dynasty, the Qing (1644–1911), a literary inquisition sometimes sentenced to death those who referred negatively to rulers. Toward the end of that era, Christian journalism appeared in China. British Protestant missionary Robert Morrison started China’s first modern periodical, the Chinese Monthly Magazine, in 1815. Articles on Christianity made up about 85 percent of the magazine, with the rest covering technology, history, poetry, and current events. Although the publication lasted only six years, other missionaries also started Chinese-language magazines and newspapers, which slowly shifted toward a stronger focus on news.

The most influential Christian publication was A Review of the Times, by American missionary Young John Allen. It ran from 1868 to 1907 and sold up to fifty thousand copies each week. With a focus on Western ideas of economics, politics, international relations, and religious freedom, the publication had a big impact on leading reformers in the late Qing dynasty. Missionaries also contributed to printing press technologies, and after the Chinese empire fell in 1911, more Chinese started their own publications.

Early in the twentieth century, though, Vladimir Lenin wrote vigorous critiques of capitalist publications. He believed under capitalism only the wealthy could publish newspapers, and they would report and analyze the news in ways that furthered their class interests. Along with other Marxists, he said the economic base of a society determines its superstructure, including its social, political, and religious understandings. He saw mass media as devoted to disseminating bourgeois worldviews and defusing alternative understandings.

Lenin hoped to overthrow bourgeois press freedoms and in so doing kill capitalism’s key ideological weapon. When the Communist Party (CP) succeeded in leading a revolution, it would make sure mass media disseminate only proletarian worldviews. The autocrats whom Lenin fought and defeated in Russia had not allowed press freedom. He thought it foolhardy for victorious Communists to allow opposition publications that would threaten revolutionary gains.

China followed Lenin’s prescriptions. In 1981, China’s CP, in its “Current Propaganda Regulations for Print and Broadcast Media,” declared “professionals in publishing, news, radio and television must uphold the spirit of the Communist Party.” Deng Xiaoping said, “Party newspapers and periodicals must be sure to publicize the opinions of the Party.” President Xi Jinping says reporters should be “disseminators of the Party’s policies and propositions, recorders of the time, promoters of social advancement and watchers of equality and justice.”

Xi has called the management of journalism “crucial for the Party’s path, the implementation of Party theories and policies, the development of various Party and state causes, the unity of the Party, the country and people of all ethnic groups, as well as the future and fate of the Party and the country.” Christians favor social advancement and the furthering of equality before God, but also seek press freedom.

Over the centuries, many Christians have fought slavery, ethnic discrimination, and the oppression of women. Many have promoted literacy and social advance, particularly for the poor. Christians have also been loyal citizens under all kinds of political systems. We do not make politics our god, and we follow the prophet Jeremiah’s instructions to pray for the peace of the cities in which God has placed us.

American Christians a century ago popularized “The Journalist’s Creed,” written by Walter Williams, dean from 1908 to 1931 of the first journalism school in the United States and probably the world, at the University of Missouri. Williams in 1921 lectured in Beijing and Shanghai, and created a department of journalism at China’s Yenching University in 1928. His creed emphasized placing the public good above private satisfaction, and noted that “the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of their responsibility, trustees for the public.” Williams called for reporting that “fears God and honors man . . . self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers.”

All Chinese journalists are now supposed to pass a multiple-choice test that includes questions like this one: “What is the most important difference between our news ethics and that of Western developed countries?” The correct answer: “The most basic principle of our news ethics is wholeheartedly serve the people; the most basic principle of news ethics of Western developed countries is freedom of the press.” Williams would have embraced both principles, in the belief that freedom of the press, understood not as personal glorification but as a search for truth, does serve the people.

Americans sometimes lecture Chinese about press freedom, but we are really in no position to do so. Journalism in both countries falls short of the Christian ideal.

Sadly, in the United States at least, so do many evangelical publications. Many are content to p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Lynn Vincent
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Journalistic Foundations
• Part 2: Practical Applications
• Part 3: Progress and Regress
• Epilogue: Beyond Shimei Journalism
• Appendix: Journalism in China, by June Cheng
• Glossary
• Select Bibliography
• Index of Subjects and Names