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Facing the Challenge

The news: drowning us in trivia; distracting us from the truth

This article can be used as the basis for a discussion in a church, campus group, home group etc. It would work well with a group aged about 18 to 21, consisting mainly or entirely of followers of Christ. It was first presented in this way by David Couchman at the student group 'Muse' at Above Bar Church Southampton, UK, on Sunday 20th January 2002.

This article should be used with a specific recent news story. We used the story about allegations that Prince Harry had taken cannabis and engaged in under-age drinking (current at the time of the event). We began by playing a clip from the early evening news on Independent Television from Monday 14th January 2002.

Brainstorm: what are the issues raised by this news story?

Here are some of the issues from this particular story (yours will be different, depending on the story chosen):

• is alcohol a drug?
• should cannabis be legalized?
• teenage rebellion
• parents and children
• do the Royal family have a 'right to privacy'?
• is there a legitimate public interest in this story?
• privilege - wealth, education, social rank
• do we still want a royal family?

This was the lead story in a half hour bulletin. In all, it occupied the first seven minutes of the program - that is, a quarter of the 28 minute total. The breakdown of this time was as follows:

• The first half minute was the headlines
• The next one minute gave us the main story
• The next one and a half minutes gave three brief segments, from the police (to say that they would prosecute Harry if there was sufficient evidence), from the prince's bodyguard (to say that they are not responsible for his behavior), from his school (to say that the alleged events took place outside of school time, and were not their concern), and from outside Buckingham Palace (to say that the Queen was backing Prince Charles' handling of the matter).
• There was a segment of about 2 minutes from the village where the alleged drinking incidents took place, interviewing several villagers.
• There was a segment of about 2 minutes from a college in Gateshead, talking in general terms about the problems parents face with their children doing drugs and under-age drinking, and what kind of help may be available.

Thus the story itself took up less than a quarter of the total time, and most of the rest was some kind of 'padding'.

A key question to ask about any news story is: how important is it? Will my life be any different in five years' time because of it?

News used to be what was important to us, what affected our lives. Then, with the birth of the mass media, we had schedules. So each evening, there would be a news bulletin, and something had to fill the schedule. One result of the mass media, with their schedules, is that stories that are not important become news to fill up the schedule.

Multiply this by hundreds or thousands of different TV and radio channels, newspapers and Internet channels in different languages all round the world, and you have a huge global industry - an industry that constantly has to pump out stories, whether or not there is anything important to say.

So the first effect of the media news is to drown us in triviality. A highly recommended book on this is 'How the News Makes us Dumb: The Death of Wisdom in an Information Society', by C John Somerville.
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The media moguls would have us believe that the news presents us with objective and unbiased truth. But if postmodernism has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as an unbiased presentation of the truth. Everyone has an agenda.

So put yourself in the shoes of the program producer or news editor. What is the purpose of this story? Why is it there? Why does it get the amount of time, and the priority slot, that it does? Brainstorm on this for a few minutes.

The suggestions that we came up with for the story about Harry and the drink and drugs included:

• To entertain us - it is the equivalent of gossip
• To pursue ratings, because ratings sell advertising time
• To give us a (false) sense of importance - the story makes us insiders to the life of this incredibly wealthy and significant person
• To get us worried (and so keep us coming back for more); although Harry is such an important person, he is really just a regular guy. Sub text: 'It could happen to you' - or to your children. (Hence the Gateshead segment.)

The news is not just there to give us the unvarnished truth. News reporters, producers and presenters 'have an agenda'. Sometimes this may be a crude political agenda, but often it is more subtle than that. It is a liberal, humanistic agenda: Human beings are basically good people, and we can solve all our own problems if we are only rational and 'tolerant'. This bias is so all-pervading, and so blindingly obvious, that we do not see it.

Another recommended book: 'Bias' by Bernard Goldberg. Subtitled 'A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News'.
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Have you noticed how God is never mentioned on the news? When did you last hear or see a news story about God? Probably never. There are stories about religion, but they are usually stories about religious institutions or conflicts. Or there are salacious stories about the vicar who runs off with the choir-master's daughter. But there are no stories about God. Apparently God has no place in the news.

So another effect of the media news is to crowd God out of our thinking.

I wonder whether you have seen the film 'The Matrix'? In this film, Neo (played by Keanu Reeves) thinks he is just a fairly ordinary guy living in today's world. Then one day he discovers that everything he has believed to be true is a lie, and that in fact he lives in a world run by super-computers, where humans are used as batteries.

At one point in the film, Morpheus says to Neo that the Matrix is

I would like to suggest that this is exactly what the mass media are - a world that has been drawn over our eyes to blind us to reality and truth, by swamping us in trivia, and crowding God out of our thoughts.

Douglas Rushkoff, in his book 'Children of Chaos: Surviving the End of the World as We Know It', coined the term 'mediascape' to describe the world we live in - that is, not a landscape, but a mediascape. Not reality, but a constructed environment. The point is that the mass media construct the world we live in, just as surely as the computers constructed the world Neo lived in.

A recent survey reported in the Radio Times that we watch television, on average, for three hours a day. This means that if you live out your natural span, you will spend something like nine years in front of the television. So the influence of the mass media on us is hugely important. And news is a vital part of the media. We have to understand what it is doing to us.

If the mass media construct our environment, then as followers of Christ, we need to learn to deconstruct the media. There are questions that we don't ask about news stories, but need to ask if we are going to understand them from the point of view of a follower of Christ. For example:

1. We believe that God is the ultimate reality. So how does God see what is happening in this story?
2. We believe that God is at work in history, and in people's lives. So how is God at work in this story? What might he be doing here?
3. The Bible teaches us that our greatest problem is that we are sinful. We are not good people who've been messed up by what others have done to us. We are by nature twisted towards evil, and our greatest need is to be forgiven, cleaned up, and rescued. So how does human sin work itself out in this story?
4. We believe that the only answer to people's greatest need is through the Good News of Jesus Christ. How does what is happening here serve the advance of this Good News in the world?
5. How might I use this story, in conversation with my friends or colleagues, as a starting point for sharing the Good News with them?

Split into small groups (5-6) for about 20 minutes to discuss how some of these questions apply to the story you are looking at. (Not all questions will be equally relevant to all stories.) Then have a brief time of feedback (not more than 10 minutes) to the person leading the session.

Suggestions for things to try at home to follow up this session:

• Try going without the news for a week. How does it affect you. If that is too much, try fasting from one particular medium that you use regularly For example, do not watch television, do not buy a newspaper, or do not use the Internet for a week.
• Get a newspaper (or video a news bulletin) and save it for six weeks. Look at it again. How much is still relevant? How much is still true? (That is, how much of it lasts?)
• Read the web article on 'Television: Agent of Truth Decay' on this site, or the book 'How the News Makes us Dumb'