Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On Prodigal Press 201

Get host people focus on the appearance as well and so now you have democrats botch that often going on fox and republicans vow that often going on. Guest the media host cnn is struggling to find its way. Guest and as a reporter who really beliefs in this idea of the facts in journalism and this notion that you can ask questions and wherever the story takes you youre not trying to advance one side or the other i think unfortunately one of the legacies is that journalism is now seen as a way to advance whatever part of the agenda is on the left and the right and i hope perhaps my book will open peoples eyes tpeoples eyes to e encourage people to want to have more of a central clearinghouse to less than the data then they arent supposed to be advancing one side or the other. Host thank you very much gabriel sherman. Guest thank you for having me. The 24th news cycle that john referred to as facilitated in part by the internet. When the original book prodigal press was written the internet was nearly gleaned in al gores eye at that time but since then the internet is driving what happens in the news cycle. We felt like it was due for an update and start working on this book about three years ago. It was just published in september. We have been delighted by the reception of the book so far and what im going to do today is to share with you some of the ideas that are in this book. I want to talk a little bit about world news crew just to give you an idea of who we are even though john did a great job of setting me up on that score and also i want to be really clear that my purpose today is not to bash the Mainstream Media. I do not in any way shape or form consider the Mainstream Media or what some people call the legacy media as the enemy. I do believe however that we are and the midst of a pathological media culture and some of the ideas that im going to share with you today hope will allow us to identify some of those pathologies and then ultimately perhaps even to find the way out of that pathologies and provide hope for the future as we can see here. First a few words if you will allow me a personal privilege about world news crew. We are the largest Christian News urbanization and World Magazine which has four and a thousand readers 26 times year and end a robust presence on the internet for 600,000 visitors a month to our web site over 2 million page views. Beginning two years ago we started a Radio Program called the world and everything in it. Its a two hour we can program and a 30 minute daily program. You will discover its not anything like what is on christian radio and sounds more Like National public radio that it does anything you would normally hear on christian radio. The two cohosts have been doing an excellent job with that starting the first of the year with a new 30 minute Interview Program but i will host and once again not patterned after christian radio but think charlie rose and terry gross and you have a little bit more about an idea in what we are trying to create with their radio presence. We have a world on campus web site targeted to young people in the whole range of agespecific publications widely used in the Christian School and the homeschool community. I would like to begin by sharing what for many of you would be obvious and that is that mass media is dominant in our culture today and it hasnt found impact on the way we think. The average in person will spend 54,000 hours with some form of mass media before they reach their 17th birthday. Even if you go to Church Every Day or every sunday, 52 weeks a year for your entire growing up time you will spend less than a thousand hours in church. That doesnt necessarily mean that has less or more of an impact than the other. Its a matter, its time you spend with them. Some of the time liesman with mass media is passive and i think the numbers really sorted put into sharp relief at least the amount of time we spend with these various influences on the way we think. I think it will be a little bit disingenuous to claim that massive amount of time has no impact on us whatsoever. In fact senator Joseph Lieberman who many of you know was no doctrinaire conservative. He was a independent senator who said this. More than three decades of research has firmly established the Electronic Media have a powerful influence on the attitudes values and behavior of americas children. This influence has grown only larger as the amount of time young people spend consuming media has grown greater. I dont think any of us would argue with that and thats one of the ideas we have begun to explore in prodigal press how the content of the media shape the way we think and we also look at how the media themselves shape the way we think but lets take a look at content first. I would like to begin offering my presentations about the content in the news media and how much it has changed over the years by saying i want to share the story of the great Christian Newspaper. The newspaper is the New York Times. If you read the New York Times today you dont think of it as a Christian Newspaper when in fact founded by a bible believing presbyterian christian in the 1850s. In the 18701 of the star investigative reporters named augusta st. Clair went uncovered in the abortion facilities in new york. Some of you may have heard of lila rose or james okeefe who is on undercover with video cameras and to plant parenthood and other facilities in posted these on the internet and that has been touted as an innovativinnovativ e use of social media and modern technologies to do investigative reporting but in fact i was being done by the New York Times in the 1870. At times passionatpassionat ely opposed abortion in its editorial papers and News Coverage calling it in from murder and said said the practices rank and smells to heaven. One abortionist exposed by the New York Times and it up spending seven years in prison as a result of those stories. The New York Times was not alone. Between 1825 in 1845 is Barbara Lasky documented in the original version of the book subset of over 100 citizens had explicitly Christian Newspapers including the boston recorder edited by a man named nathanienathanie l willis one of the most interesting and lively publications of its era. During that same period new york city alone boasted 52 magazines and newspapers that called themselves explicitly christian but of course we know the New York Times is christian no more. The times of today editorializes in favor of samesex marriage and abortion ideas and most evangelical christians find a point. Times columnist aaron has said the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the american people. Whether you agree or disagree i think you would have to agree calling Tea Party Republicans jihad this reflects a certain tone deafness when it comes to theological distinctive. We begin to see that religious coverage and the use of religious language and newspapers in anything that resembles a knowing usage has dramatically deteriorated not just in the New York Times but another publications as well so much so that Jill Abramson who became the first female editor at the times said this. In my house the times substituted for religion. It was the absolute truth. Again we see how far the New York Times has come within a 150 or period and i think its fair to say that is what happened at the times is indicative of what has happened in other publications. To highlight all of the reasons for the reasons that would cause us to be here for today and besides im here to talk about the book and we have documented much but i would simply say there has been a lot cultural technological and political changes that have taken place over those 150 years. There wasnt a switch that went on our off that cause the Mainstream Media to go from a fundamentally religious worldview to one that is fundamentally ill religious or at least not religious today. Its been a wide variety of events and changes in our culture that have occurred during that period of time. Some specific events we talk about in detail in prodigal press are the rights of transcendentalism. Most of us remember from her High School English courses may be we have tried to forget over the years that you might remember Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathanael Hawthorne and other transcendentalists writers. What we might forget about those folks whose they were also men of letters in the Public Square as well. They were not ivory tower theorists. They were riding in the newspapers and magazines have their day. The progressive era in the late 19th century of tradition what someone called a golden age of journalism but its an era from which we remember names like cornelius Greely Greely who said go west young man and then coming forward into the 20th century men like William Randolph hurst whose hurst newspaper change and magazine empire which is around today and the subject of the movie citizen kane which has been one of the great movies of all time but it also painted William Randolph hurst board John Foster Kaine in that movie . As a man who worked was dislocated from a sense of purpose and meaning in his life so much so that at the end of the movie he died alone and said we begin to see that as we marched through the 20th century from the trial of 1925 covered by the leading journalist of the day h. L. Mencken and it wasnt just coverage of the trial but it was a worldview as well and h. L. Mencken made that abundantly clear in his papers. As the christian worldview verses the material scientific worldview that was really in the doc and not john stokes the teacher who is teaching darwinism at the time. Moving forward even further the Whittaker Chambers alger hiss trial that took place in 1950. If you read Whittaker Chambers autobiography witness you know the trial was not just a trial about Whittaker Chambers and communism but it was really a trial of worldviews. It planted the atheistic worldview of communism verses the theistic worldview that Whittaker Chambers had come to over the course of his life and also by the way what was then a relatively inconsequential small bat water newspaper on the map which of course is the Washington Post which cover that trial extensively and had its coverage around the country and because it was also a trial of new deal ideas it really established the Washington Post as a leading liberal progressive this newspaper of the late 20th century. All of these factors and more go into creating the media that we have today so much so that by 1986 robin and Linda Lichter at husband and wife team along with Stanley Hoffmann were able to write a book called the media elite in which they found after extensive surveying journalists were well to the left of the general public on a wide range of ideas and not just on the culture war ideas that we think about today like abortion and homosexuality but also ideas such as affirmative action and Energy Policy as well. Fastforward another 15 or so years and become to jim kuypers study. Jim kuyper is a study professor at Virginia Tech and he did a survey of 116 newspapers and found media tend to operate within a fairly narrow wage in other words not only are they liberal but their range of contacts and range of views that they represent in their stories tends to be within the family as well print another thing jim kuyper said that was interesting is they attend tended to highlight the more radical liberal voices. I think that is one of the reasons why whenever folks like that pass in florida who burn the koran or the pastor from fred phelps of Westboro Baptist church will protest at the funeral set servicemen. Those stories get picked up as they are large and they are shrill but they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of conservative or christian people in this country. But because most liberal journalists dont have any sense of rolodex of conservative and evangelical context they just tend to gravitate to the words they hear the most about so it creates a flawed in a skewed vision of the number of people with liberal and christian views but also the range of those views and the reasonableness of those views as well. Study by the American Enterprise institute found the results that were consistent with the surveys that i just mentioned. Between 10 and 15 fewer positive stories occurred in the media when there was a republican in the white house and so what we end up when we take all of this together is a vision of the Mainstream Media that is creating a narrative that ends up being biased with both liberal and antichristian ideas. This is important because being in control of that public narrative sometimes called the metanarrative by theorists really does matter. In fact i saw an example graphically of how an agenda to a story can make a difference. Let me before a show you those pictures just mention this. This is one of the reasons this is important is because robert webb said the most pressing issue of our time is who narrates the world . Who narrates the world and how they narrated matters in the way Public Policy decisions get made. Now that photograph i will share with you. A great storytelling and a putt can elicit a powerful reaction but who holds the camera . In this case it really does matter. Small changes can make a big difference. I think we see this every day at the nation media that these changes or differences are subtle but they really do make a powerful difference in the ultimate narrative that gets told to the american people. So content matters and what is in the media can shape the way we think. Ive like to shift gears a little bit and spend the next couple minutes also talking about the media themselves, the technology that is used and how that has changed and how those changes also affect the way we think and the way we process ideas. So the question i would post to you is the one on the screen. Has moderate media and technology and culture eroded our ability to think especially to think deeply about complex issues and ideas which are the very basis of the christian and conservative world view. Maybe you have thought deeply about these questions and the answer to that question is indeed yes. One of them is neal postman who wrote a powerful book that a big influence on my life and we quote extensively in prodigal press called amusing ourselves. What he says his own media have limited abilities and and there are certain things that they are unable to do. His famous metaphor was Smoke Signals where he said Smoke Signals can communicate to you for example that i exist and communicate where i am and that i have a desire to communicate with you but it doesnt communicate much more than that. You dont know much about the philosophy, my theology my loves, my hates, my desires and my fears. Smoke signals just do not have the capacity to communicate those ideas. Postman goes on to say that all media have certain limitations and its important for us to understand what a particular medium can indicate but also what the limitations of that medium are. The other thing postman said was that all media especially new technology, the benefits, the positive aspects of the technology tend to show up first in the negative aspects tend to show up later. I have come to call that the happy hour effect. If you walk via bar at 5 00 in the afternoon the sign on the bar doesnt say come in and we will take all of your money and cause you to make bad decisions later in the evening that you will regret for the rest of your life. If that was a sign on the door nobody would go in the bar so the sign on the bar instead says what . It says happy hour. It wants to communicate the positive benefits first and the negative benefits tend to show up later. Thats true of any new technology. We dont embrace the new Technology Like a laptop computer or an iphone or any other of the wonderful technologies we have embrace because of the negative consequences that might show up in our lives as a result. We know for example now many people die every year, literally thousands will die this year because of texting while driving on their cell phones. If we were told that was the primary consequence of owning a cell phone that we would die at the wheels of our car we would never embrace that technology. We embrace new technologies because it offers benefits varied and not saying they arent real benefits. Neal postman says we should evaluate Technology Based not on just the benefits but on what he calls the net cost or the net than a fifth of technology. A great example of that showed up in the news a couple of years ago and ive come to call up the story of facebook and it gives you an idea of what net effect looks like. A woman whose house was robbed posted a Mainstream Media<\/a>. I do not in any way shape or form consider the Mainstream Media<\/a> or what some people call the legacy media as the enemy. I do believe however that we are and the midst of a pathological media culture and some of the ideas that im going to share with you today hope will allow us to identify some of those pathologies and then ultimately perhaps even to find the way out of that pathologies and provide hope for the future as we can see here. First a few words if you will allow me a personal privilege about world news crew. We are the largest Christian News<\/a> urbanization and World Magazine<\/a> which has four and a thousand readers 26 times year and end a robust presence on the internet for 600,000 visitors a month to our web site over 2 million page views. Beginning two years ago we started a Radio Program<\/a> called the world and everything in it. Its a two hour we can program and a 30 minute daily program. You will discover its not anything like what is on christian radio and sounds more Like National<\/a> public radio that it does anything you would normally hear on christian radio. The two cohosts have been doing an excellent job with that starting the first of the year with a new 30 minute Interview Program<\/a> but i will host and once again not patterned after christian radio but think charlie rose and terry gross and you have a little bit more about an idea in what we are trying to create with their radio presence. We have a world on campus web site targeted to young people in the whole range of agespecific publications widely used in the Christian School<\/a> and the homeschool community. I would like to begin by sharing what for many of you would be obvious and that is that mass media is dominant in our culture today and it hasnt found impact on the way we think. The average in person will spend 54,000 hours with some form of mass media before they reach their 17th birthday. Even if you go to Church Every Day<\/a> or every sunday, 52 weeks a year for your entire growing up time you will spend less than a thousand hours in church. That doesnt necessarily mean that has less or more of an impact than the other. Its a matter, its time you spend with them. Some of the time liesman with mass media is passive and i think the numbers really sorted put into sharp relief at least the amount of time we spend with these various influences on the way we think. I think it will be a little bit disingenuous to claim that massive amount of time has no impact on us whatsoever. In fact senator Joseph Lieberman<\/a> who many of you know was no doctrinaire conservative. He was a independent senator who said this. More than three decades of research has firmly established the Electronic Media<\/a> have a powerful influence on the attitudes values and behavior of americas children. This influence has grown only larger as the amount of time young people spend consuming media has grown greater. I dont think any of us would argue with that and thats one of the ideas we have begun to explore in prodigal press how the content of the media shape the way we think and we also look at how the media themselves shape the way we think but lets take a look at content first. I would like to begin offering my presentations about the content in the news media and how much it has changed over the years by saying i want to share the story of the great Christian News<\/a>paper. The newspaper is the New York Times<\/a>. If you read the New York Times<\/a> today you dont think of it as a Christian News<\/a>paper when in fact founded by a bible believing presbyterian christian in the 1850s. In the 18701 of the star investigative reporters named augusta st. Clair went uncovered in the abortion facilities in new york. Some of you may have heard of lila rose or james okeefe who is on undercover with video cameras and to plant parenthood and other facilities in posted these on the internet and that has been touted as an innovativinnovativ e use of social media and modern technologies to do investigative reporting but in fact i was being done by the New York Times<\/a> in the 1870. At times passionatpassionat ely opposed abortion in its editorial papers and News Coverage<\/a> calling it in from murder and said said the practices rank and smells to heaven. One abortionist exposed by the New York Times<\/a> and it up spending seven years in prison as a result of those stories. The New York Times<\/a> was not alone. Between 1825 in 1845 is Barbara Lasky<\/a> documented in the original version of the book subset of over 100 citizens had explicitly Christian News<\/a>papers including the boston recorder edited by a man named nathanienathanie l willis one of the most interesting and lively publications of its era. During that same period new york city alone boasted 52 magazines and newspapers that called themselves explicitly christian but of course we know the New York Times<\/a> is christian no more. The times of today editorializes in favor of samesex marriage and abortion ideas and most evangelical christians find a point. Times columnist aaron has said the Tea Party Republicans<\/a> have waged jihad on the american people. Whether you agree or disagree i think you would have to agree calling Tea Party Republicans<\/a> jihad this reflects a certain tone deafness when it comes to theological distinctive. We begin to see that religious coverage and the use of religious language and newspapers in anything that resembles a knowing usage has dramatically deteriorated not just in the New York Times<\/a> but another publications as well so much so that Jill Abramson<\/a> who became the first female editor at the times said this. In my house the times substituted for religion. It was the absolute truth. Again we see how far the New York Times<\/a> has come within a 150 or period and i think its fair to say that is what happened at the times is indicative of what has happened in other publications. To highlight all of the reasons for the reasons that would cause us to be here for today and besides im here to talk about the book and we have documented much but i would simply say there has been a lot cultural technological and political changes that have taken place over those 150 years. There wasnt a switch that went on our off that cause the Mainstream Media<\/a> to go from a fundamentally religious worldview to one that is fundamentally ill religious or at least not religious today. Its been a wide variety of events and changes in our culture that have occurred during that period of time. Some specific events we talk about in detail in prodigal press are the rights of transcendentalism. Most of us remember from her High School English<\/a> courses may be we have tried to forget over the years that you might remember Ralph Waldo Emerson<\/a> and Nathanael Hawthorne<\/a> and other transcendentalists writers. What we might forget about those folks whose they were also men of letters in the Public Square<\/a> as well. They were not ivory tower theorists. They were riding in the newspapers and magazines have their day. The progressive era in the late 19th century of tradition what someone called a golden age of journalism but its an era from which we remember names like cornelius Greely Greely<\/a> who said go west young man and then coming forward into the 20th century men like William Randolph<\/a> hurst whose hurst newspaper change and magazine empire which is around today and the subject of the movie citizen kane which has been one of the great movies of all time but it also painted William Randolph<\/a> hurst board John Foster Kaine<\/a> in that movie . As a man who worked was dislocated from a sense of purpose and meaning in his life so much so that at the end of the movie he died alone and said we begin to see that as we marched through the 20th century from the trial of 1925 covered by the leading journalist of the day h. L. Mencken and it wasnt just coverage of the trial but it was a worldview as well and h. L. Mencken made that abundantly clear in his papers. As the christian worldview verses the material scientific worldview that was really in the doc and not john stokes the teacher who is teaching darwinism at the time. Moving forward even further the Whittaker Chambers<\/a> alger hiss trial that took place in 1950. If you read Whittaker Chambers<\/a> autobiography witness you know the trial was not just a trial about Whittaker Chambers<\/a> and communism but it was really a trial of worldviews. It planted the atheistic worldview of communism verses the theistic worldview that Whittaker Chambers<\/a> had come to over the course of his life and also by the way what was then a relatively inconsequential small bat water newspaper on the map which of course is the Washington Post<\/a> which cover that trial extensively and had its coverage around the country and because it was also a trial of new deal ideas it really established the Washington Post<\/a> as a leading liberal progressive this newspaper of the late 20th century. All of these factors and more go into creating the media that we have today so much so that by 1986 robin and Linda Lichter<\/a> at husband and wife team along with Stanley Hoffmann<\/a> were able to write a book called the media elite in which they found after extensive surveying journalists were well to the left of the general public on a wide range of ideas and not just on the culture war ideas that we think about today like abortion and homosexuality but also ideas such as affirmative action and Energy Policy<\/a> as well. Fastforward another 15 or so years and become to jim kuypers study. Jim kuyper is a study professor at Virginia Tech<\/a> and he did a survey of 116 newspapers and found media tend to operate within a fairly narrow wage in other words not only are they liberal but their range of contacts and range of views that they represent in their stories tends to be within the family as well print another thing jim kuyper said that was interesting is they attend tended to highlight the more radical liberal voices. I think that is one of the reasons why whenever folks like that pass in florida who burn the koran or the pastor from fred phelps of Westboro Baptist<\/a> church will protest at the funeral set servicemen. Those stories get picked up as they are large and they are shrill but they are not representative of the overwhelming majority of conservative or christian people in this country. But because most liberal journalists dont have any sense of rolodex of conservative and evangelical context they just tend to gravitate to the words they hear the most about so it creates a flawed in a skewed vision of the number of people with liberal and christian views but also the range of those views and the reasonableness of those views as well. Study by the American Enterprise<\/a> institute found the results that were consistent with the surveys that i just mentioned. Between 10 and 15 fewer positive stories occurred in the media when there was a republican in the white house and so what we end up when we take all of this together is a vision of the Mainstream Media<\/a> that is creating a narrative that ends up being biased with both liberal and antichristian ideas. This is important because being in control of that public narrative sometimes called the metanarrative by theorists really does matter. In fact i saw an example graphically of how an agenda to a story can make a difference. Let me before a show you those pictures just mention this. This is one of the reasons this is important is because robert webb said the most pressing issue of our time is who narrates the world . Who narrates the world and how they narrated matters in the way Public Policy<\/a> decisions get made. Now that photograph i will share with you. A great storytelling and a putt can elicit a powerful reaction but who holds the camera . In this case it really does matter. Small changes can make a big difference. I think we see this every day at the nation media that these changes or differences are subtle but they really do make a powerful difference in the ultimate narrative that gets told to the american people. So content matters and what is in the media can shape the way we think. Ive like to shift gears a little bit and spend the next couple minutes also talking about the media themselves, the technology that is used and how that has changed and how those changes also affect the way we think and the way we process ideas. So the question i would post to you is the one on the screen. Has moderate media and technology and culture eroded our ability to think especially to think deeply about complex issues and ideas which are the very basis of the christian and conservative world view. Maybe you have thought deeply about these questions and the answer to that question is indeed yes. One of them is neal postman who wrote a powerful book that a big influence on my life and we quote extensively in prodigal press called amusing ourselves. What he says his own media have limited abilities and and there are certain things that they are unable to do. His famous metaphor was Smoke Signals<\/a> where he said Smoke Signals<\/a> can communicate to you for example that i exist and communicate where i am and that i have a desire to communicate with you but it doesnt communicate much more than that. You dont know much about the philosophy, my theology my loves, my hates, my desires and my fears. Smoke signals just do not have the capacity to communicate those ideas. Postman goes on to say that all media have certain limitations and its important for us to understand what a particular medium can indicate but also what the limitations of that medium are. The other thing postman said was that all media especially new technology, the benefits, the positive aspects of the technology tend to show up first in the negative aspects tend to show up later. I have come to call that the happy hour effect. If you walk via bar at 5 00 in the afternoon the sign on the bar doesnt say come in and we will take all of your money and cause you to make bad decisions later in the evening that you will regret for the rest of your life. If that was a sign on the door nobody would go in the bar so the sign on the bar instead says what . It says happy hour. It wants to communicate the positive benefits first and the negative benefits tend to show up later. Thats true of any new technology. We dont embrace the new Technology Like<\/a> a laptop computer or an iphone or any other of the wonderful technologies we have embrace because of the negative consequences that might show up in our lives as a result. We know for example now many people die every year, literally thousands will die this year because of texting while driving on their cell phones. If we were told that was the primary consequence of owning a cell phone that we would die at the wheels of our car we would never embrace that technology. We embrace new technologies because it offers benefits varied and not saying they arent real benefits. Neal postman says we should evaluate Technology Based<\/a> not on just the benefits but on what he calls the net cost or the net than a fifth of technology. A great example of that showed up in the news a couple of years ago and ive come to call up the story of facebook and it gives you an idea of what net effect looks like. A woman whose house was robbed posted a Security Camera<\/a> video on her facebook profile and because of that video the burger was identified and arrested. If this is all you know about that story you would say this is a fantastic use of technology. It was a fantastic use of a video camera and facebook in the engine and in general but if you know the rest of the story you might come to different conclusion. It turns out this robber was a facebook friend of the victim and he learned that the woman would be out for the evening because of her updates on her facebook profile. The rest of the story communicates the effect of facebook on this womans life was not positive but the first part of the story might suggest. Another great anchor is Marshall Mcluhan<\/a> who wrote a book called understanding the media. Hes probably best known for his idea of the medium is the message. He communicated that idea using a metaphor that sometimes called a mcluhans lightbulb and it says imagine walk into a dark room and its completely pitch black and you dont know whats in the room. What would your behavior be . Mcluhan says your behavior would be guarded, that you might have fear the way you walked around the room and the way you can indicated to who might be in the room would be a certain way. If the light suddenly came on in that room and you could see what was in that room for behavior would change. You would see what was in the room and a belligerent mike this with all the happy faces here, friends of mine are not enemies of mine, my behavior would completely change. My attitude would completely change. My posture would completely change. Mcluhan asked the question what changed about the room . To the contents about the room change . It was the medium by which we experience the room that change. That is one of the reasons why Marshall Mcluhan<\/a> said the media is the message that media compelled behavior whether we want that behavior to be indicative of who we are or not. I sometimes when im talking to young people use the example of the lord of the rings a contrast of the book in the movie. For those of you who might be board of the rings geeks, aragorn has a lot of names. He is son of aragorn for example which gives you an idea of his lineage and his heritage and background. He is a strider and is also a ranger which is an office in the ranger is someone who is a protector. As j. R. Tolkien writes the book these names unfold and we begin to interact with the text on the page and build a picture in our mind of aragorn son of the future king but if you have seen the movie which by the way really like and i think the movies are wonderful in many ways but the vision of who aragorn is and the other characters in lord of the ring are direct good in whatever picture i might have of airborne in my own mind tends to get swamped and overwhelmed by the picture the movie producer wants me to have of aragorn which looks a lot like to me. Media in other words has the power to manipulate and confuse us. It has the ability, producers and the media whether journalist or movie reducers or record producers can pose their view on us rather than allowing us to actively collaborate and participate with the world to come up with what our view of what the world looks like. What can we do about it and i will close with this and let you guys ask me some questions about the book and about some of the ideas. One of the things we can do is we should stand for and with what has sometimes been called the good, the true and beautiful and stand for and with those who produce the good ,com,com ma the true and beautiful. At World Magazine<\/a> the think a powerful tool for doing that is what we call biblical storytelling. Biblical storytelling is the process of using scripture as our standard of truth and using a biblical norm which is storytelling to make that truth, life. So for example it would not be enough to say that abortion is bad if you for example believe abortion is bad but it would be more powerful and more effective of women, children and families and communities that orson has impacted until the consequences show and not just tell the consequences of abortion or whatever it is youre trying to show the consequences. I also want to be clear that we dont think technology is bad. Clearly my presence here today is an indication that its not not we are streaming this presentation live on the internet and many viewers we pray will watch this on cspan. All technology is not bad. In fact we dont think technology is bad at all. We should use all the technological tools that the province is made available to us that we should as neal postman said be aware of their abilities and limitations. We must be discerning consumers so we are not manipulated by the abilities and the limitations of those technologies. Im going to hold this closing story until the q a and if youll indulge me a couple of minutes at the end of the presentation to close with this. I would like to pause now and see if there are any questions that you might have and john do you have some ground rules . The simple ground rules if youll wait for the microphone and if you do not mind at least identify yourself as a courtesy to the speaker and im going to take the opportunity to ask you the first question. Notice you keep talking about journalisjournalis m and of course i think about marvin olesky and the journalism school. Journalists used to be like the diary writing down what they observe today. Then they crossed the line of i feel bad. Then they crossed the line of maybe we should feel bad. Then we have gotten to the point where even before the story is released particularly in washington the talking points, the pr campaign is begins to weaken tell you what you are going to read before you read what youre going to read. Is there any mechanism for getting around that . Thats a great question and that to me as is part of this pathological media culture we are in. Is there a way to get around the . That pandoras box has been opened and i think the cat is out of the bag. I dont think we can go back to a pre24 7 news cycle which is a part of the reason this exists and if i could just back up i think often its not malicious intent on the part of people that create this environment. Sometimes it is malicious intent that i think often its a function of the fact that now instead of a couple of networks we have 10 or 12 News Networks<\/a>. Instead of 30 minutes with Walter Cronkite<\/a> at 6 30 in the evening we have 24 hours a day seven days a week three and in 65 days a week these Cable Networks<\/a> have to fill. It becomes a real tyrant this 24 7 news cycle. There is not enough im not going to say theres not enough news because theres plenty of news in the world that theres not enough reporting capabilities so they fill it with punditry. I think that is a big part of it. I think the ultimate solution to that though is in the hands of the consumer. We have got to stop that kind of behavior. We have got to reward with both our readership and our Financial Resources<\/a> those organizations that are actually putting reporters on the granted doing real porting and not just resorting to punditry in the studio. Usually by the way the studios are in places Like Washington<\/a> and new york and los angeles. They are not in places like where i live charlotte, north carolina. Jennifer marshall here at heritage. The world is explicit about its world view with which it reports and seeks to eliminate the illuminates a new story or editorial. Can you comment on other media, how much disclosurdisclosur e of worldview do you think goes on . Do you see differences between print and broadcast an on line in that regard withheld dominating they are both with their own worldview and the worldview in the coverage . Youre absolutely right. Other media claim to be fair and balanced or objective or whatevr language they want to use. We have an entire chapter in prodigal press that we have revised this version because things have changed so much in that area you are talking about in the last few years where in 1988 the media were very subjective. There was a very clear bias in the media but it was for the most part they disguised bias. We call that disguised by subjectivity in the book. Now we have moved into an era where is completely undisguised. I will use msnbc is as an example. Some of you rather the Barack Obama Campaign<\/a> used the slogan for word as part of its campaign branding if you will. You might remember about the same time msnbc went through a rebranding process any remember do you know what slogan it now uses on that network . Does anyone know . Not forward but lean forward. Im not saying theres an explicit complicity between the Obama Campaign<\/a> and msnbc but i am simply saying it reflects the commonality of worldview so there are we now live in an environment where most of the News Networks<\/a> are much more explicitly either conservative or liberal in their point of view. I would also say even those that want cop to the plea of being liberal because of some of the things we just talked about, the lack of sources that they actually have on the right and the ability and willingness to paint conservatives stereotypically are in a caricatured. Even those that are at least pretending to some level of balance usually end up skewing heavily on the liberal side. This goes back 40 years but i cant resist telling this anecdote. Pauling kale was the legendary film reviewer for the new yorker magazine and when Richard Nixon<\/a> was reelected president in 1972 with one of the greatest landslides at that time pauline kale reportedlreportedl y said nixon . I dont know anybody who voted for nixon. She was probably telling the truth. She probably didnt know anyone even though the vast majority did. Bad again is sort of an attic to that indicates what a bubble most people in the Mainstream Media<\/a>, journalists and Mainstream Media<\/a> live in and dont know whats going on outside. Thats only gotten worse over the years. Yes, sir. Dave rice retired journalist and educator. When i started in journalism in 1970s there were pages, the front page was supposed to be news disguised in objectivity and part of what you pointed out is this land where today people have a hard time distinguishing between editorial punditry and news. Its all thrown together whether its on the internet. What role if any d. C. Education play in separating that and apply it to your own christian belief. You have somebody might save christian bias but youre coming from a worldview on everything that you do and believe and so what is the role of Education Today<\/a> in your mind of letting people know the differences between this is what should pass as news and this is opinion and this is Something Else<\/a> . I think the role of education is huge. Unfortunately i dont think that its likely that the mainstream educational situations of this country are going to be able to rise to that challenge. For example there are almost no Journalism Schools<\/a> in Christian College<\/a>s in america. The only graduate program in journalism at a Christian College<\/a> that i know of is at Regent University<\/a> and so if you want to teach journalism at the College Level<\/a> you have to have a graduate degree in journalism. Its usually in journalism. Its unlikely that someone coming up in a system that is going to be educated in a mostly liberal mostly secular Higher Education<\/a> system in this country is suddenly a lightbulb is going to go off and are going to have a worldview thats any different than the world in which they have been indoctrinated. Education should play a huge role but from the early stage we put them in public universities are journalists in particular and outgoing to Public Institutions<\/a> that are secular that dont have a christian worldview so its unlikely that those institutions are going to change that pattern. Im a citizen journalist with watchdog. Certainly there are rivals. Could you talk about fox news versus cnn and contrast that to Christian Broadcast Network<\/a> . Thank you very much. Fox news not Christian News<\/a> orientation i will say that and what the Christian Broadcast Network<\/a> is doing and not terribly familiar with it. I think its a step in the right direction. The Christian Broadcast Network<\/a> fox news is not nearly enough to combat the overwhelmingly secular and liberal worldview that we see on virtually every other news network thats out there. The resources of both of those organizations combined would amount to probably a small fraction of the newsgathering capabilities that you find at say a place like nbc. Without making any specific judgments or criticism about the Christian Broadcasting Network<\/a> or fox i will simply say whatever they are doing that is good is inadequate for the news of the day. Yes, sir. Dave Russell Service<\/a> direction or for campus outreach these radical voices being highlighted despite the couple families being more of a baptist than the ku klux klan is a Christian Ministry<\/a> they are always making the news. Can you talk more about why their voices are highlighted so much . I think its a combination of ideology and practicality. The ideology is simply that i dont think most folks in the Mainstream Media<\/a> have the theological training and tools and temperament and background to be able to tell the difference between fred phelps and Westboro Baptist<\/a> church in rick warren at saddleback church. I think for the most part they dont get the difference. They dont understand what the differences are for the most part. They are just again its not maybe animosity but a complete lack of understanding and the ability to discern the subtle differences. And again if im a science reporter for National Public<\/a> radio its inconceivable that i would get hired for the job without having some sort of a science background. Yet journalists every day cover stories not the religion report is what im talking about all reporters cover issues every day that have religious moral or ethical component to them and they dont have any training in these areas. I think part of it is that they just dont have the antenna to discern the news and i think another part is the practicality if these guys are putting out press releases, if they are videotaping what they are doing and they have videotape available, if they are making it easy for the media to cover them especially Digital Media<\/a> television and Electronic Media<\/a> is staging demonstrations and holding up signs that say god hates on them does become compelling visuals that the Mainstream Media<\/a> too often cant resist. You see that the local level where you turn on virtually any local Television News<\/a> network nbc that old saying if it bleeds it leads. They cover a lot of car wrecks in fires because they make compelling visuals and their are a lot of flashing lights and Yellow Police<\/a> tape that looks good on television. The other side of it too there often is some animosity. The idea that fred phelps is represented that mainstream evangelical christianity plays into many peoples narratives of what evangelical christianity is all about even though its not completely true. Its what they want to believe. Its their bias and prejudice so they will continue to cover folks like fred phelps or if the ambassador in florida nor reasonable evangelical voices who thought deeply about some of the issues that theyre covering. Is a footnote how much journalism and the media. When i was growing up i thought of it as partly Public Service<\/a> as they did as their overall broadcasting nowadays its worse to profit line and if its no profit line of we dont do the news. We need to do the gotcha lines. One not clear john that is changed a whole lot and if you look at William Randolph<\/a> hurst for example they became one of the wealthiest on the planet long before the news modernday sarah. I do think it allows me to segue into another adjusting point. Within the secular arena you have organizations assess the center for American Integrity<\/a> and the public corp. For public broadcasting. Organizations like npr that receives funding from the corporation for public broadcasting and propublica which is an investigative news organization. These are nonprofit organizations that are privately funded unfortunately from my point of view cpi and Propublica Team<\/a> seemed to be leftleaning and that is where most of their funding comes from. We dont really have a viable conservative alternative to those types of organizations. I do think that could be the wave of the future. We will see more nonprofit journalism and journalism thats going to be funded by organizations especially Investigative Journalism<\/a> which doesnt always return and provide an economic return right away. It looks like you had a question. Any other questions . Den Dean Sinclair<\/a> from alexandria virginia. Earlier on in your talk today you talked about the fact that journalists are very much liberal in their political leanings may be 80 or more. Is there something in the system that just draws liberal people to that kind of profession . Is there something in the hiring mechanism . Was going on there that makes is so overwhelmingly liberal . Thats a really good question and i think it goes back in part to the Education System<\/a> that we talked about. Most journalists are being trained in the liberal secular academies of this country so thats like we going to be what they produce. We have a lot of the statistics in prodigal press but gallup has been doing a survey about Church Attendance<\/a> in america and that Church Attendance<\/a> while it moves up and down and has trailed off a little bit in recent years has stayed around 40 when gallup asked the question have you attended a religious service in the last seven days which is a specific day for a question. Close to 40 of americans answered yes to that question. When journalists are asked the same question a variety of surveys have been done, the numbers usually less than 10 . You could argue is that right or is that wrong or was it good or is it bad that i would argue that its different, its way different than the religious orientation of the yield behaviors of journalists looks really different from the mainstream. In some ways it becomes either a virtuous cycles for a downward spiral depending on your orientation. Of all of your friends are liberal, if all of your friends are secular in their worldview and orientation and you get positive reinforcement on that, thats just going to create a continuing cycle. Its going to be hard for you to justify rationalized looking outside your world view because you are getting all kinds of affirmation both professionally and personally with the community in which you are operating. Any other questions . Do you mind if i close with my story . Some, be what ive said my lead you to believe that im a pessimist and the truth of the matter is that im not. I think theres a lot of hope for the future and part of that hope springs from my understanding of history and that is that god always works for a remnant. There is a continuous cycle throughout history of decline and recovery. One story that i find encouraging which i would like to share with the in closing is the story of the battle of britain which probably many of you know. The battle of britain began in august 1940 when the germans lufafa started great written. They started bombing great written in part because hitler wanted to invade britain and new new day after day they were real air force went against the lufafa and we now know with the hindsight of history with what hitlers plans were from his","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia800307.us.archive.org\/18\/items\/CSPAN2_20140426_005700_Book_Discussion_on_Prodigal_Press\/CSPAN2_20140426_005700_Book_Discussion_on_Prodigal_Press.thumbs\/CSPAN2_20140426_005700_Book_Discussion_on_Prodigal_Press_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240620T12:35:10+00:00"}