Why news is inevitably flawed – and what to do

Where there is no guidance a people falls, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety (Prov. 11:14 ESV).

It started with a Tweet. A photo of myself and two Ukrainians picking out a Christmas tree, and within an hour a friend Tweeted, ‘The Nazi government in Ukraine were guilty of geno-cide and deserve all they are getting’.

‘You won’t read this in the papers’, he told me, ‘Because the Western media are all spouting the line given them by the government and the military-industrial complex’. To get the truth you had to go on YouTube – there followed links to many videos.

Are we being fed lies? A cynic would say ‘Yes!’ But how should a Christian read the news?

Virtue of patience

Let’s start with the virtue of patience. News is gathered by people like you with deadlines to meet and too much to do. A journalist may have an hour to research, write and file a story before moving on to another. The result is never perfection. David Broder, formerly of The Washington Post, wrote that a newspaper is: ‘A partial, hasty, incomplete, inevitably somewhat flawed, and inaccurate rendering of some of the things we heard about in the past 24 hours. If we labelled it accurately, we would say, “It’s the best we could do under the circumstances, and we will be back tomorrow with a corrected updated version”.’

It might take weeks to get a true-ish idea of what is going on. Instant moral judgments are usually wrong. We need to gather and reflect on the news before we speak.

Truth

Secondly, we need to remember that only God has a monopoly on truth. Broadly, journalists tend to be liberal arts graduates. This often means a built-in liberal bias and an astonishingly poor understanding of science. On top of this, most commercial media have a political bias. This is usually to the right, but some are left-leaning. Knowing this helps us to process the news thoughtfully.

Bias isn’t always bad, we just need to know how it works. All woven fabric has a bias, a piece of cloth will stretch when pulled one way but not when pulled another. Designers work with this bias to make clothing that looks right. In the same way we need to allow for the bias of the media we consume to get a better idea of what is really happening.

News multiculture

Thirdly, we should give thanks for the gift of a free press. Modern democracies have a news gathering and broadcasting ecosystem with many diverse species (news outlets). It is not possible for a government to manipulate all of them into speaking with one voice. In contrast, totalitarian countries are a news monoculture. Weeds, in the form of dissenting views, are quickly destroyed.

Beware the swamp

To extend that metaphor, the internet is a swamp. Social media are the most powerful machines for spreading lies that the world has ever seen. Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram look like a chaotic free-for-all, but are carefully programmed to feed you views that reinforce the ones you already hold, and then expose you to the bile of those who don’t.

Like Solomon, Christians should listen to many counsellors (Prov.11:14), so we need to hear more than one voice if we are to get the truth. This may include social media, but it must include traditional news sources too. We should seek out and pay for the work of those whose job it is to write again tomorrow with a corrected, updated version.

So read wisely, listen widely, and remember that journalists are just as biased as we are!