A Christian response to the media

It’s no secret that many Christians harbor deep skepticism of the “liberal media elite.” Some have been burned by the media, noting unfair or unfriendly coverage from the past. “I never just accept what newspapers say about people. I’ve seen them get facts, quotes, and reasons wrong far too many times,” California pastor Rick Warren wrote on Twitter earlier this year. Or, as popular blogger Jon Acuff has suggested, Christians tend to treat the secular media as though it were Satan’s newspaper.

The skepticism runs deeply in response to perceptions Americans feel about how the media treats religion. Just 19 percent of Americans say the news media is friendly to religion, a poll from the Pew Center found in a March 2012 survey. Skepticism of the media seems to run deeper for evangelicals, at least when reporters cover religion. About half of evangelicals believe the press is “unfriendly” to religion, compared to 35 percent of Americans overall. The result can be a tendency for media consumers to read only those we agree with or ideas we want to affirm.

But carrying an unhealthy cynicism toward the media can rattle our sense that there is indeed knowable truth. Instead, the savvy Christian should seek to gather several pieces of information and ideas before filtering them through what he or she knows to be true. We can look to media accounts to begin to understand general revelation, God’s providential work manifested in the world around us.

Continue reading at www.ligonier.org

« Previous Article

Posting Policy

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, vulgarity, profanity, all caps, or discourteous behavior. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain a courteous and useful public environment where we can engage in reasonable discourse. Read more.

Aristophanes

Well, duh!! Of course I don't trust or believe the liberal media. Like obozo, they have been caught in too many lies and cover ups.
- Evermyrtle
  
  YOU SAID IT.!!!!
Bighoss

The wing nuts will soon be posting here, burping up their standard hostile shots at the "liberal media." To them, the "liberal media" is anything less conservative than Fox News, the transparent media arm of the ultraconservatives..
- Evermyrtle
  
  Do you mean we will be doing telling the other side of the story, while the liberals tell your side of the story? Every story has two sides, you know, even if you do only want one side to be exposed.
  - Bighoss
    
    No–I mean that the self-anointed "fair and balanced" talking (and blithering) heads of Fox will dependably avoid any real sense of fairness and balance as they relentless push a far right agenda. The network news reports are far more fair and far more balanced than the propagandistic tripe barfed out by Faux News. Call the networks and the major newspapers the "lamestream news" if you wish (a la Sarah the Pitiful Palin), but they do a pretty good job of reporting real news correctly. Give me Bryant Williams over the regrettable Mike Huckabee or the deranged Glenn Beck any day or night.
    - http://www.answersingenesis.org/ keyboardshark
      
      The "fair and balanced" Fox to which you mockingly refer is the only network that had a 50/50 balance of negative and positive reports involving Obama in the 2008 election. All the other 'mainstream' media were heavily biased toward Obama by a wide margin, and they themselves even admitted it was wrong after the fact.
      
      http://www.akdart.com/obama15.html
      
      NBC ADMITS BIAS TOWARD OBAMA
      
      http://www.wnd.com/2008/01/45446/
      
      Halperin Decries ‘Disgusting’ Pro-Obama Media Bias in Election Coverage
      
      http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2008/11/halperin-decrie/
Evermyrtle

What puzzles me its that the shenanigans of the liberals seldom appears on the news except FOX NEWS, Let any conservative well know, make a boo boo and every news station will air it for days.
- Bighoss
  
  "…shenanigans of liberals seldom appears…"
  "Let any conservative well know, make a boo boo and every news station will air it for days."
  Say WHAT?!!
  
  Are you trying to imitate them, then, with your awkwardly-worded, boo boo-infected post?
mallen11

News should be given with the facts only – not what the commentator thinks – under the Lincoln Stephen rule the 4th Estatecame to realize that all they had to do is to throw in a comment about the newsand they could gain power. This is why there is tremendous power in the news. Most were communist lefties and progressives during college and agitators as they are now. They don’t like the military and they slant the news and use it to preach. FOX news comes the closest but still don't just give the facts. We need to weed out the fluff. I prefer reading the news.