Tag Archives: Christianity

Commentary

MUST-READ: How the media’s secular bias affects their news coverage

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Here is a magnificent post up at Big Journalism, Andrew Breitbart’s new web site. (H/T ECM)

First, he talks about different journalists are from the rest of America:

The modern secular newsroom lacks the ideological know-how to truly understand religion.  Perhaps Terry Mattingly best exlplained the media’s “diversity problem”. According to Mattingly, “While there’s been heavy gender and racial diversity … there’s a lack of cultural diversity in journalism…”  It is this lack of diversity that leads to major misconceptions and the media’s inability to adequately tell stories that are rooted, themselves, in religious themes.

The lack of diversity may lie in the journalists themselves, as personal faith plays a role in the ability to understand and thus illustrate religious themes.  Just how religious are journalists?  According to USA Today, “the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported in 2007 that 8% of journalists surveyed at national media outlets said they attended church or synagogue weekly.”  Additionally, 29% reported never attending church services, with an additional 39% stating that they go a few times each year.  In sum: Not very religious – especially when compared to America as a whole.

Later on, he talks about how rigid conformity to secular presuppositions creates bias:

In covering the American Religious Identification Survey that was conducted in March 2009, the Pew Research Center wrote,

“A comment on the blog Matters of Faith declared, “The media’s tendency to give inordinate attention to religious dimwits and crackpots has seriously damaged the credibility of religious leaders. You rarely read or hear of the miraculously generous work of faith communities in caring for the poor and infirm around the globe. But let someone suggest that the Virgin Mary has appeared in a plate of refried beans and the bulletins circle the globe in minutes.”

This commentary targets one of the media’s main malfunctions when it comes to covering religion in general and Christianity in particular.  As is the case with most stories covered by the mainstream media, the more outlandish, the more the story is pursued.  In practice, this creates a climate of coverage strewn with the “dimwits and crackpots” mentioned above, as journalists lack the understanding or desire to seek a wide array of theological viewpoints.  Meanwhile, thousands of Christian missionaries risk their lives both domestically and internationally to make lasting spiritual and physical change in the lives of those in need.  Yet their stories go widely unnoticed.

Here is an example of news coverage that you will never see in the mainstream news.

The secular leftist media will run stories about Sarah Palin’s children, and the Duke Lacrosse non-rape, because even though the stories later turn out to be fraudulent, they want to send the right message. They view their work as propaganda designed to effect political change. And I think it is sometimes useful to reflect on the story in the video above and ask why such stories are not covered. And the answer is because the media doesn’t tell people about news that doesn’t fit their rigid ideological stereotypes.

I was chatting with ECM about this post, and he informed me about The New Yorker’s movie critic Pauline Kael, who was surprised by Republicans’ 49-state landslide victory in the 1972 federal election.

She said:

“How could that be? I don’t know a single person who voted for Nixon.”

And that’s the news media today. They are not informed about views different from their own. They do not question their own fundamentalist assumptions by seeking out debates. Everything they need to know about religious people they learned from watching “Inherit the Wind” and “Jesus Camp” and such propaganda that allows them to demonize anyone who disagrees with their worldview. You would think that their ignorance of the best arguments on the other side would make them cautious, but it doesn’t.

News

Unemployment rate among men aged 25-54 is 19.4%

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Check out this post over at Dinocrat. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

According to an analysis done by TIME Magazine’s Justin Fox, almost 20% of 25-54 year old men are unemployed today, a receord since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track of the data just after World War II. An unemployment rate of 20% among men in their prime is shocking. Absent the substantial government transfer payments today and the large labor force participation by women, the 20% male unemployment figure would be regarded as a national emergency.

Rome is burning. And yet Congress and the administration fiddle with crooked healthcare deals, tomfoolery such as AGW, perverse nonsense like cap and trade, imaginary “green” jobs, the treating of enemy combatants as mere crooks, etc. — and their policies towards hostile powers are even more ill-informed and provocatively weak. It’s hard to imagine a government more out of step with the people.

Here’s the graph from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the decline since 1948. (H/T Time Magazine)

This is actually important to me, and something I am thinking a lot about. I have come to realize that marriage is really an incubator for passing on values to children that are often different from those of the state. Scholars like Stephen Baskerville and Jennifer Roback Morse have argued that the family is a buffer against the power and influence of the state. This is especially true for Christian men and women whose values are definitely not those of the secular leftist state. But where do families come from? How do they start?

In order to have a family, a man marries a woman who agrees with his worldview and values, and then they have children. It’s the man’s role to lead the family by protecting and providing for his wife and children. But that man needs a job so that he can have confidence that he can fulfill those responsibilities. The earning of money is what gives a man the respect and authority in the home so that he can lead his wife and children. Any challenge to the man’s role as protector and provider diminishes his authority to lead.

Already, I am concerned about how the massive tax burden placed on working men causes them to have their authority whittled down, since the state confiscates much of a man’s money and then provides services that he really should be providing himself. Often the services provided (abortion, etc.) are not compatible with Christianity at all! But this new statistic about 19.4% of men in their prime being unemployed is even worse, because now men are earning no money at all! How can they start a family with no income?

There really isn’t much thought going on today about the problem of how to get men to marry and stay married. Instead, people are more focused on dealing with a variety of of grievances from victim groups. I’ve blogged before about the problems that men are having in the schools today, largely due to the application of feminist theory to education. No one seems to be concerned about whether men are doing well in school, and whether they are being raised in families with actual fathers, instead being raised by government subsidies.

I think that young people really need to stop and think about what they want out of life. There seems to be a tendency today among young people to think that relationships are about fun, and that it isn’t necessary to be careful about your choice of mate because the government will always be there to take care of you if you get into trouble, (e.g. – unplanned pregnancy, abusive spouse, etc.). This must stop. We need to stop looking at the government as a substitute for making solid, long-term choices about sex and marriage.

At some point we are going to have to ask ourselves whether we are ready to abandon the family entirely and just substitute sperm donations and government checks for men. If the state is the source of money in a child-producing unit, then the state is the one who calls the tune about what the children will believe. And make no mistake – academics on the secular left are salivating at the thought of pushing their values onto the next generation of children. That is why they are hostile to voucher programs and private schools.

Related stories

Some stories from last year about just a few the problems men are facing.

There are actually many other problems that men are facing that I could have brought up, but my focus today is on education and jobs. These are serious problems and they have serious consequences.

Mentoring

Brit Hume is interviewed about his public witness for Christianity

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Here’s the interview from Christianity Today. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

Do you think your experience becoming a Christian after your son’s death has led you to be emboldened to talk about your faith publicly?

I ought to be willing to do that. I don’t want to practice a faith that I’m afraid to proclaim. I don’t want to be a closet Christian. I’m not going to stand on the street with a megaphone. My principal responsibility at Fox News isn’t to proselytize. But occasionally a mention of faith seems to me to be appropriate. When those occasions come, I’ll do it.

And:

What were you hoping people would take away from what you said?

Well, I was kind of hoping that in some way word of it might reach Tiger. I was hoping that people who were of faith might receive some encouragement from the message. You never know. I also thought it was interesting. I didn’t really sit down and make some kind of calculations on a sheet of lined paper about what were going to be the consequences. We were expressing our views and those were my views on that point.

Now watch this video of Brit Hume explaining why he did it, on the O’Reilly Factor.

My thoughts

First, I am appalled by the reactions of the hard secular left,. They seem to think that it is a horrible crime to recognize one religion over another. Obviously these people are thinking that religion is like a cultural thing you inherit, or a personal preference. I really have trouble understanding how people could be so stupid as to not realize that religions make conflicting claims about an objective reality – claims that can be tested using history, science, the laws of logic, etc.

Second, I think that we Christians need to seriously consider whether we can try to be more like Brit Hume in the places we are. Let me explain.

First, consider this passage, which is, I think, the scariest verse in the New Testament, and has caused me to act bravely more than any other verse, because I just cannot stand being a coward when someone has put their trust in me, in the context of a relationship.

Matthew 10:32-33:

32“Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven.

33But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.

And here’s a less scary one, that I also like a lot:

1 Corinthians 4:1-4:

1So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the secret things of God.

2Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.

3I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself.

4My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

Now there are two kinds of people in the world. The kind of people that don’t mind obligations that are placed on them by someone who loves them, and the kind of people who do mind. And Brit Hume is the first kind – he has the desire to be faithful in his obligation to tell the truth about Christianity in public, regardless of the flak he catches from the secular left. It reminds me of the motto of the Order of the Garter: “Honi Soit qui Mal y Pense” – “Shame on him who thinks ill of it.” Shame on him who thinks ill of it. Shame on the people who defend Roman Polanski but denigrate Brit Hume.

By the way, I also think that we Christians should be striving for excellence so that when we do witness, a lot of people who are already impressed by our credentials will give our message the respect it deserves! So work hard in school and at work! And encourage other Christians to do well in school and at work, too. We need to be thinking about the most effective ways to have an influence. And I think that studying apologetics helps us to believe the things we say we believe, and to explain those things intelligently and confidently to others.

My favorite lecture

Now may be a good time to point you all to the lecture that changed my life: Dr. Walter Bradley’s “Giants in the Land”. You can listen to THREE VERSIONS of it. It will probably make you cry, or at least you will get a lump in your throat.

Dr. Walter L. Bradley

  • Ph.D. in Materials Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1968
  • B.S. in Engineering Science, University of Texas at Austin, 1965

My favorite lecture of all time:

And variations of his “Giants in the Land” lecture that I like:

Other lectures:

I hope these lectures encourage you to be a bit more brave on behalf of our mutual friend!