The internet is our guest today, marvin olasky, were proud to welcome him back to its heritage where hes a visiting fellow in somebody whos a close friend of our organization. The author of 25 books including his latest, reforming journalism which he will talk about today. Marvin, his political journey is quite unique. As he became an atheistand a marxist in high school and went on to join the communist party in the 1970s. It was at the university of michigan when he had his phd when hehad a spiritual awakening and was baptized into the Presbyterian Church in 76. He later became the founder of the redeemer Presbyterian Church in austin texas in 1992. After college he taught journalism for 25 years at the university of texas at austin and became a regular yale daily news at the boston globe. Is for both garnered him significant attention the eye of the Bradley Foundation which supported his visiting fellowship right here at the Heritage Foundation for 2 years. One of his most wellknown works is the tragedy of american compassion which transformed him into a leader in the Christian Conservative political thought movement. Newt gingrich distributed to every republican member of the house at the time. Its also what inspiredphrase compassionate conservatism. Marvin was instrumental in the success of the World Journalism Institute of which he is now the dean and the institute ceased to recruit and written trained christian journalists and inject them into the Mainstream Media and we need that. Hes the editorinchief of world which is a multimedia News Organization that reports from a christian worldview. Follow him on twitter at marvin olasky. His most recent book is titled reforming journalism and has been described as a history of journalism including tips on newswriting and advice, advocating conservative convictions in mediums thatare traditionally dominated by the left. As somebody who went to Journalism School and spent time in washington i have enjoyed reading it and i highly recommend it to you. We have copies for sale as you leave the auditorium in the lobby. Now to tell us more about reforming journalism i like to welcome marvin olasky. [applause] thank you rob, thank you all for coming today. Its great to be back atharry. Really ive spent the most Productive Research life ofmy life in 1989, 1990. This building was the base of the library of congress five blocks away and it was fun literally blowing the dust off 19thcentury records in the library. My research turned into the tragedy of american compassion. People say it made a difference in the drive for welfare reform in the 1990s and i like to think that change several Million People move beyond their roles into Productive Work so im grateful to heritage for that contribution to fighting poverty in america. A friend of mine is the head of aei and once said he got Barack Obamas job to drop when arthur told him im a conservative because i care about helping the poor. And id say president k james could say the same. Im grateful to americans heritage for the year hereand the background that rob referred to. Back in the 1970s i thought i was pretty smart. I had high sat scores, a yale diploma, a bigtime journalism, i was basically a leftwing protester invited into the halls of power and i was so smart that i did one of the stupidest things anyone could do, i joined the communist party and really purely through gods grace i came out of it and in retrospect it was a beneficial experience for me. Im not sure for others but for me it was because itmade me understand how stupid i was and thats an important thing for all of us to come to mind. It helped meunderstand that many people also considered smart are stupid. I started to wonder how i where i could go to find true wisdom and i became skeptical of existential subjectivity and the lack of humility that typifies journalism and typified me as well if im not careful and that brings me to todays subject. In september, the former trump aide spoke to a conservative group in st. Louis and asked do you think its been unpleasant and nasty to date . You havent seen anything. The 20 20 campaign will go down as the most vitriolic and nasty in american history. Its simple. We win, we save the country. No, we do not. We do not win, we do not save the country if we win by escalating anger. Everyone who wins by that sword will eventually die by it and just a little history since this is what was studied a lot, the United States has been exceptional, i know theres debate about that but through all the revelations ive studied the americanrevolution is the only one that did not become disastrous. Revolutions in france, russia which i became familiar with, china, cambodia, cuba , they always started with ideals that quickly became idols and thatcould happen here, not next year , probably not in the next decade but it could happen. I visited argentina last month with its inflation, that could happen here and we could become like venezuela where class warfare has all classes and journalism made in vitriol is part of the problem so if we keep escalating our cultural dk, our eventual debt driven nationalbankruptcy, we will lead more people to go from fierce words to sticks and stones. The old objectivity never was all that good, it certainly doesnt work now. Are there alternatives . Id like to lay out my suggestions based on biblical teaching that might help us make journalism part of the solution rather than part of the problem and i want to stress that these suggestions grow out of my work at world. When i was at heritage 30 years ago, i walked over to the new station and met with joel bell who found the world in 1986, joined the board of directors in 1990 and started editing in 1992 and i did that because that was the way that they wouldnt take me off the board and just be more active perhaps in other types of mischief but we had that at a time when other journalistic enterprises were shrinking of these suggestions are not just theoretical constructs, we road tested them over the years and were convinced that they work so number one, doing journalism at street level, not sweet level. Everyone has opinions. Its easy to sit at our computers airconditioned offices and pontificate. We tried to emphasize, consuming streetlevel reporting. We like being flies on the wall, watching and listening. We dont want to make ourselves the center of attention and dont want to make ourselves the font of wisdom. We like to go out and report and reporting is falling into rare circumstances these days. Theres so muchopinion journalism, theres very little reporting. People paying attention, watching, describing, thats number one. Number two, sprinkle salt, not sugar. Some of you may work in Corporate Public relations departments, i did that for five years. Some of you are nonprofit officers or congressional suites, ive had some experience there and i know the job for people in that situation is to make your organization or your boss look good. I did some of that. I worked at dupont for five years and it was great educationally and financially area but the task really was a handout sugar. Wheat statements that sometimes covered up the truth and thats not Good Journalism. Sometimes people are forgetting the divide to journalism and actually going out and trying to honestly report whats going on without doing it in a way thats designed to popularize, publicize particular groups or organizations or individuals. And sugar is very helpful either, just because sugar fixes,these sweet statements cover up the truth. If not Good Journalism and in a world we try to add salt. Salt and case, its also a preservative, thats our goal and that makes us unpopular in certain quarters including conservative quarters because number three, we try to avoid entangling, we can resolve not sugar because we dont have distract the backs of other organizations. Even when they scratch hours. World, i am a christian first, conservative second. World can be the same way but its not art of the conservative movement. We are not part of the evangelical movement either. We can and you decide other groups, more than 23 years ago, world was a member of the evangelical press association, we learned that epa code of ethics prohibited criticism of other epa members that made it a neutral Protection Society and sometimes organizations, our organizations, conservative or christian are area we resigned from the epa and have tried to inboard entitlements ever since independence is important. Number four, wed like to publish facts but we tried to use understated prose. Much of journalism is has become like the movie franchise. Frame one, screen two, screen three and so forth. People who get paid by cliques create click base. Thats not healthy for consumers or producers area we do have sensational news and we tried to tell it, screen it and thats also very different from a lot of journalism these days. Number five, we try to remember the theological reason for not screaming. The sky is not falling. Because god holds up the sky. We had a flood along timeago, god promised not to send another one. This year theres the 75th year since we invented Nuclear Bombs and released two of them on japan. It is absolutely miraculous that during decades of cold war we did not have a nuclear war. There were times we came close. Im not aware of any time in Human History that a massive three effective new weapon hasnt been used for such a long time. Thats amazing. Its not natural, its almost supernatural and when i think of this i really am filled withthanksgiving and you should be to. God is so great we cant get our arms around him but hes clearly had his arms around us. John calvin wrote about how we ought to gaze around gods works that we may be restored byhis goodness. And with all the rotten stuff that goes on, still, amazingly we havent had the disaster that i think anyone would have predicted we would have had by now. I looked at predictions back in the first decade of this century and people were predicting that there would be Nuclear Bombs smuggled in and people even giving odds better than 50 percent that we would have a Nuclear Incident in this country in the next five or 10 years. That hasnt happened and i guess we keeppraying that it hasnt happened. God has worked keeping us from killing each other and the death toll in the billions is a miracle of mercy. My apologies forpreaching, do i get an amen . So now that ive moved into theology let me waitinto deeper water. You may know the truth by bob dylan, youre going to have to serve somebody. World views direct all reporting and writing. Sometimes in a very implicit way, sometimes explicitly but theres not even the simplest story is without some degree of position on something. When firefighters fight fire, wecheer for the firefighters, not the fire. When we have discoveries that help people fight cancer, we are proud proud to build discoveries, were not cheering for cancer and a lot of people think that stuff that used to be popular is actually a cancer of some kind but were not cheering for the cancer either. Allreporting in some ways is directly recorded. And in the 20th century, some journalists pushed back against what used to be called out objectivity. And some still argue that an objective reporting the reporter comedy function like a camera people increasingly understood we certainly, people in journalism did camera shows depends on the kind of lens and film you have and so on. So to update the metaphor, you are more than your smartphone. Your smartphone reports, depends on where youre standing, when you turn on and off and you decide which sounds to keep or show or playback. In covering stories, reporters decide overtime is most important to present and what to ignore beliefs, judgments, ideologies direct thosedecisions. Direct the reporting area so what does that mean, does that mean its hopeless, everythings opinion . Not exactly. In future stories particularly the choice of a protagonist and antagonist, we call this camel when were running out of old journalism institutes in all stories. Those feature stories have protagonist, antagonist, mission obstacles. The basic structure is someone does something because , but and then you have the tension that comes in. And reporters decide who someone is, what it represents and worldviews are important and that again, i stress that because this leads to all five people throwing up their hands. We dont getconventional objectivity doesnt work then its all subjective. This brings us to what number seven and World Mission statement that we try to provide biblically objective journalism that informs, educates and inspires. The biblical objectivity, its so different from the conventional version of objectivity some people have a hard timegetting their eyes around ill try to explain. For 23 years now, i loaned and mostly work in a trial house on a hillside in texas. Accepting texas its cold and working mountain. The hill. The house sways slightly when heavy winds hit and that initially made me nervous. We had the top floor and you felt some movement but the builder of the house lived next door so i couldask them about theconstruction and certainly itwas pretty solid and it hasnt fallen down yet. You know how the house was made. Because he had made it. Journalists conventionally throughout the 20th century instilled these days sometimes described objectivity is getting opinions a bnc and putting them equally. But say my neighbor down the street says my house will fall down if the wind goes 10 miles an hour and maybe a neighbor across the street says well, its made of kryptonite and it would reject an attack even by superman. And it may be a third the other side that says my house is made of cheese or calls a hurricane but dont worry because i can my way out. If i quote all their opinions equally, will i have an objective story in mark know. Even if they were all experts and not slightly nutty. Im speaking generically, not of my particular neighbors, i still would not have an objectively accurate story but they dont know my house late the builder knows the house. Balancing subjectivity is does not give us an objective answer. What does . Well, god is the builder of the house we all live in. He gave us the bible. Which explains how the house was made and what its made out of. I believe that only god knows the true objective nature of things and i always didnt believe this, i had to learn it through hard thingsthat were hard useful. I believe in this book the bible is the only completely objective and accurate view of the world. Which means the only true objectivity is biblical objectivity. Do i expect others to believe that . Probably not unless god impresses that upon them unless he impresses it on me the way he did all these years ago and happily he does that formost people. Why he doesnt do it for everyone i dont know but there it is. Many of you have seen the weird but wonderful movie field of dreams, if people could not see the Baseball Players they are still there so how do we sort out whats real and whats not and whats true and whats not. This is our technique here, its a metaphor for white water rapids, our business offices and National North carolina so there are white water rapids 40 or so miles west of it when we had a world journalism classes there, we would sometimes take our students out to its and we would go down the rapids and about 25 students at a time, maybe in six rubber boats and when i captained one of the riverboats goes i was the only one who had experience i was such a poor captain i was running under bushes and trees and so forth and everyone ended up in the water at some point and one potential reporter ended up in the middle saying let me out, let me out which we eventually did and she did not really make it as a reporter. White water rapids, thats typical objectivity. Thats the shorthand and we have reporters all over the country and in africa and asia and so we get together in a couple of weeks and as were discussing stories and how to approach them, whos going to be our protagonist, antagonist and so forth we use this rapids as a shorthand. Because people who know white water rapids talk about six kinds of rapids. Number one is gently down the stream, i am capable of doing number three. Number six is going over waterfalls and im not sure real expert is going to die. Class i, class i is where the bible takes an explicit position so its easy to follow along area for example adultery is wrong story say about Sexual Practices we would not make an adult or a hero area i want to emphasize that taking a strong position where god takes one does not give us the way to misquote our opponents or mischaracterized them or ridiculed them, it does not require publicrelations health. But nevertheless, there is a clear position that will influence the way we tell the story. Class ii of the bible takes an implicit position for example, parents are responsible for the education of their children so we support biblebased schooling at home. But we dont think those schools should pretend god doesnt exist area is not neutral, saying god doesnt exist is taking a definite position so im class to, we will take a position we may not be as strongly, we will certainly acknowledge as we always do alternatives but we will still say theres something bible shows us is right and something wrong in this. Class iii, partisans on both sides scripture verses so only careful study through the vital those two biblical conclusions. One of the things we talk about that world is showing concern for the unborn, the uneducated, theuncle employed, the unchurched, the unfashionable. Whats most important is not whether we feel righteous, is whether we are helping or hurting area since all people are made in gods image, with the capacity to be creative and productive, to a greater or lesser extent, i think we find from both biblical teaching and experience that fame and encouraging people not to work are often harmful rather than helpful area and will come at it that way. We will knowledge is a hard day. What we do when theres a person at Union Station asking for money to give to not to give, this is hard and to inquire experience in a sermon, we probably get still get it wrong a lot of times