Consuming media justly
Do wise comments spoken years ago ever keep you thinking even now? It must have been about 2004 that I heard Marva Dawn explain why she doesn’t read newspapers or stay up-to-date on current events. (Marva Dawn, by the way, is an incredibly gifted theologian and teacher who can blow you away with her orthodoxy in one sentence and her crazy-out-there ideas in the next.) Anyway, Dawn’s comment has stuck with me and still bothers me today, especially when I get sucked into the 24/7 news cycle and media-driven ridiculousness that feeds our culture of instant gratification. What’s the best way to consume news?
Dawn’s point, if I remember correctly, was that our moral imperative (for her, most definitely the Christian imperative) is for us to work for justice and peace at all times. Getting hung up on each day’s top stories and media ratings games pushes us off course. We get stuck in the trees of the hour’s headlines and miss the forest of God’s goodness, justice, holiness, and peace.
She wouldn’t have put it this way, but Dawn was speaking in favor of a TIME magazine print edition way of living as opposed to a Drudge Report approach. The TIME dead tree edition comes out weekly and has a more penetrating and expansive view of news — partly due to higher word counts, partly due to the timeliness of the news. But if you go to TIME’s blogs, or the Drudge Report, you get many updates each day on both the minutiae and the detritus of the hour. (Or you could use the analogy of The New Yorker vs. Huffington Post, or Harper’s vs. USA Today Online, take your pick.)
Each week, I read hundreds of blog posts, dozens of NY Times articles, check in at CNN.com scores of time. For local news I read the Grand Forks Herald and Kittson County Enterprise. Most weeks I’ll also read Newsweek, Time, The Presbyterian Outlook, and The Christian Century. Of course, I’ll keep up on current events through Twitter links and RSS feeds. Oh, and then there’s the hours of NPR listening and a few other podcasts thrown in to boot. And so I wonder, how do my media choices affect my view of the world?
Part of me wants to experiment and, for a week or two, try to avoid anything current events related. I might not get bogged down each week in articles or issues that are more adiaphora than anything. I wouldn’t hear reports of Apple’s iPod event in real time, nor would I read dozens of perspectives on the Ground Zero Mosque (that isn’t a mosque or at ground zero, by the way). But, on the other hand, I do think all the little articles add up to a fuller picture of the world. Sure, I may read some details about how Sen. Murkowski lost the Alaska Republican primary that really don’t matter, but I might also get a glimpse of the sentiments that are driving the Minnesotans and North Dakotans with whom I interact on a daily basis.
Either way you live, though, Dawn’s larger point is the most important. Do you seek justice and love in all your interactions and in all world affairs? For Marva Dawn, it’s easier for her to do this faithfully without reading the daily newspaper. I don’t know if she would grant that it could be, for me, easier to be faithful while keeping up on current events. My takeaway is this: whether one reads TIME dead tree edition or checks RSS news feeds hourly, the lens with which you read and live in the world is key. Do you live with a lens for social justice or do you live with a lens for social stories gone wild?
image by Gerhard Höllisch
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OTOH, Barth said one should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
True. And I love that quote. But I wonder what Barth would say about Fox News and Google news alerts. Does the professor in her ivory tower reflect more helpfully than the talking heads on TV? And if so, by whom are we best formed and informed?
Barth said that, but he also once preached an entire hour-long sermon in the 1930s to a group of German pastors without once mentioning Hitler. He was accused of being irresponsible, but he said, “Hitler is a nothing. I am called to preach Christ crucified.” I think that’s what Marva Dawn is getting at. Hitler is not a “nothing,” but Barth’s point is, we sure can get blown off course in our need to be ‘relevant.’
And we can get mired in the pointless kerfuffles that don’t ultimately matter. I think it’s time to stop talking about Glenn Beck, for example. We’ve said our piece and will continue to preach social justice and it’s time to move on.
I’m actually starting to resonate with Marva Dawn on this. You hate to tune out of the 24 news cycle altogether, because there is critical stuff to respond to. On the other hand, there is such triviality to sift through to stay current. Being informed comes at a cost.
Here’s what I think would be ideal, for me anyway:
1. an indepth resource, print or online, that analyzes the news deeply. Maybe it would come out maybe every three weeks–enough time to put the pointless kerfuffles in perspective, or just ignore them altogether
AND
2. some kind of e-mail ‘alert’ that comes out as needed but can highlight truly time-critical stuff, especially stuff that needs a response from the pulpit, or to a letter to a congressman, etc.
I don’t watch news on TV. At all. Unless you count Jon Stewart’s “fake news” Daily Show. I do listen to NPR quite a bit.
I subscribe to both our local newspaper and the daily NY Times, although I rarely have time (take time) to sit down and read them both. In many ways, our subscription to both papers is more to throw our support behind a way of distributing information that seems to be losing its existence.
I do read news online throughout the day as well.
And I appreciate your point. I do.
BUT…
How are we to know where to seek justice if we are uninformed of the injustices in our community and world? I know you aren’t claiming that we should hide in a closet and stay away from all news. But, I do think reading the news helps me connect my gifts and ability to serve with the real needs that are out there in the world.
And, I think we’re in the political mess we’re in precisely because the country is woefully uninformed and uneducated. When Lindsey Lohan and Glenn Beck are the “news” America wants to hear about, we’re all in trouble.
Martin Marty had a wonderful montly publication called “Context” that included qoutables from a variety of sources – I wonder if it is still around. Great questions Adam. And happy anniversary
Thanks for the comments, folks. I like @MaryAnn’s idea of some sort of occasional news source with deep analysis, but yeah, I wonder what we’d miss as well. I sometimes think about that when I listen to NPR — they do completely skip many news stories some networks spends hours on, partly because they have essayists and culture critiques, etc.
Oh, and for the record, I don’t watch any news on TV — haven’t even owned a set since high school. Though I guess I do catch an occasional clip online. And I did watch The Wire on DVDs and streaming because it’s the best show in the history of television.
Another poignant post, Adam. Great to hear the theological angle on this. Through my own (overly?) attentive news reading, I’ve come across the interesting series in the NYTimes about the psychological effects of being “plugged in” to our computer devices, and if it might be negatively impacting our life in the “here and now” world. Surely there are similarities, as your time spent reading the news, or thinking about reading the news, or regurgitating information learned while reading the news, may take away from engagement in other aspects of life: theological, interpersonal, and otherwise. But of course the case could be made that it enriches those things. In the end, I suppose it’s the principle of moderation.
That being said, I’m glad I devoted time to reading your blog post, as it has enriched my day.
[...] wrote on a friend’s blog this week, in response to a different topic: Karl Barth once preached an entire hour-long sermon in [...]