More than Sane: Rethinking Our Relationship to Media Post-Trump II
As we move ever closer to Donald Trump’s inauguration and his second term as President, it seems unlikely that U. S. politics will change into less polarized. Yet, while political figures often take the blame for division, Alicia Juarrero reminds us that context matters. Our media environment, greater than any single leader, shapes the best way we expect, act, and reply to the world around us. For Christians, this calls for a reorientation—not simply to sanity, but to a theological perspective in a digital age.
While media has all the time been a component of our overarching context, the best way we’ve change into participants in and with the data has modified radically in a lot because it has change into increasingly ubiquitous and interactive. Yet, there have been signs along the best way that the media might be used as a tool to advance or diminish the common good. As I note in Thinking Christian, “The digital age and its tools, then, should not a lot the perpetrator, however the mechanism by which our collective mis-thinking regarding quite a lot of matters has change into more evident.”
In essence, there are common challenges that span the “analog,” “digital,” and now “AI-powered” ages. We cannot ignore the implications of such contextual changes. They will likely require us, as Christians, to regulate and adapt in order that we remain connected to reality quite than falling into the delusional political world driven by our media use. As Russel Moore recently notes, “The constant flow of (real and faux) information spikes our adrenaline, activating our ‘lizard brains.’ We throw our limbic systems into the sense of getting to support or to oppose something—when, much of the time, there’s actually nothing we are able to do about it.”
To highlight among the challenges media poses, we may look briefly at three critics: Edward R. Murrow (1958), Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1978), and Carl Bernstein (1992). Spanning multiple a long time, these three individuals identified a shared concern: the transformation of the media from a way of connecting people to reality to a tool used for distraction and manipulation. Their insights remain relevant today as digital platforms have amplified among the tendencies each of them recognized within the media of their day.
What Can Three Media Critics From the Past Teach Us about Today’s Digital Challenges?
1. Murrow’s “Wires and Lights in a Box” (1958)
In 1958, veteran broadcaster Edward R. Murrow expressed his concerns with the technologies of his day. Murrow recognized the challenge of merging “show business, promoting, and news,” highlighting the influences of political and economic interests. For instance, he suggests that advertisers should not simply buying “six minutes dedicated to his industrial message” but “determining, inside broad limits, the sum total of the impact of the complete hour” in order that “if he all the time, invariably, reaches for the most important possible audience, then this technique of insulation, of escape from reality, will proceed to be massively financed, and its apologists will proceed to make winsome speeches about given the general public what it wants or letting the general public determine.” Popularity, in other words, replaces wisdom or, perhaps worse, becomes wisdom.
2. Solzhenitsyn’s “A World Split Apart” (1978)
In “A World Split Apart” (1978), Alexander Solzhenitsyn critiques the Western Press noting, “Unrestrained freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership, because newspapers mostly transmit in a forceful and emphatic way those opinions which don’t too openly contradict their very own and that general trend.” He goes on to suggest that the Western press justifies its sensationalism through “the slogan ‘Everyone is entitled to know the whole lot.’” Solzhenitsyn, nevertheless, sees this as “a false slogan of a false era” since it has overtaken the more worthwhile ‘’right of individuals to not know, to not have their divine souls filled with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.”
3. Bernstein’s “The Idiot Culture” (1992)
Bernstein’s critique of the media highlights themes much like those of Murrow and Solzhenitsyn. He sees the demands for “speed and quantity” as poor substitutes for “thoroughness and quality, accuracy and content.” In Bernstein’s views, reporting has surrendered substance in order that “the really significant trends in journalism haven’t been toward a commitment to one of the best and probably the most complex obtainable version of the reality, not toward constructing a latest journalism based on serious, thoughtful reporting.” Journalism has given up its role in difficult the culture. It now not “stretches and informs” readers and consumers. Murrow’s concern about radio and tv programming has, in accordance with Bernstein, been realized.
Bernstein also resonates with the challenge Solzhenitsyn noted in 1978. Bernstein suggests that the sensationalized types of journalism in his day lean back on the First Amendment, concluding, “In a free country, we’re free for trash, too.” While the people were still free to not listen or eat, the media outlets and platforms of Bernstein’s day didn’t make it easy. Bernstein notes, “On the day that Nelson Mandela returned to Soweto and the allies of World War II agreed to the unification of Germany, the front pages of many ‘responsible’ newspapers were dedicated to the divorce of Donald and Ivana Trump.” Despite being “probably probably the most powerful of all our institutions today,” the media “They—or more precisely, we—have abdicated our responsibility, and the consequence of our abdication is the spectacle, and the triumph, of the idiot culture.
3 Keys to Avoid Being Shaped by Modern Media Narratives
After a contentious election season, it seems likely that we will likely be entering a similarly contentious political environment. The so-called “mainstream” or “liberal” media will likely offer the worst possible spin on anything Trump does in office, while “conservative” media will likely be more generous. In between, there will certainly be those that try and offer more nuance. While it could be tempting to think that, as Christians, we only have to be reasonable, our first priority is to be theological…to be Christian first.
Being Christian first is made difficult because among the tendencies of media have been amplified in our current digital age.
1. Stay Grounded through Discipleship
First, while it has all the time been possible to read only one newspaper or hearken to one news bulletin, the proliferation of “channels” via independent content creators and the platforms that host them likely reduces the overlap in the data each of us receives. Even if we’re all aware of a given event (e.g., the re-election of Donald Trump), we don’t understand it ‘in actual fact’ but from a specific perspective that seeks to strengthen or reorient the best way we understand the event. This lack of overlap creates problems because society begins to lose a typical center.
On a societal level, that creates quite a lot of problems; nevertheless, societies will divide over time regardless. Christians, nevertheless, are coordinated through discipleship. The individual members of the body of Christ and the body as a complete learn to live under Christ’s authority in order that we experience peace, repentance, forgiveness, and generosity. Without Christian discipleship, we are able to disintegrate as easily because the world. The solution, then, to the potential separation and isolation media tends to cultivate isn’t the elimination of media (thought they can also be smart), but a recommitment to discipleship.
2. Focus on Glorifying God
Second, sensationalism has change into the norm. We are asked to offer our attention to matters over which we’ve little control or influence. In giving our attention, we’re also urged to specific indignation and outrage. Calm, thoughtful conversations is probably not unattainable, but they’re discouraged.
When I see Christians taking a defensive stance, I generally appreciate their passion. At the identical time, our aggravation doesn’t necessarily proclaim the gospel. We must make our first thoughts less concerning the situation presented to us within the media and even the actual situations facing our nation and more about pointing to and glorifying the Triune God. Nations will fall. Political parties will shift positions. Such matters should not trivial, but they should not ultimate either. As such, we must seek to bear witness to the God we serve, even when which means losing some political battle.
3. Step Away From the Noise
Finally, though Murrow was concerned with the influence of business interests on media, it isn’t clear that he could have anticipated the deepening linkage between promoting and our attention. In his day, televisions weren’t portable. You couldn’t carry a functionally inexhaustible amount of content in your pocket. Radio and tv were still fascinating, but not in the best way the small glowing rectangles to which we seem inextricably attached are today.
Christians need to acknowledge that giving attention is a theological act. When we scroll “mindlessly” on our phones, it has change into our focus when God is to be our focus. We must step away from technology and media as Jesus often stepped away from the crowds following him during his ministry. We need time to hope, study, and reorient ourselves to life in God’s presence.
Keep Christ on the Center of Your Witness
The media, even Christian media, tends to bury the theological lead. It is all the time tempting to legitimize our own pursuits and concerns by finding the suitable Bible verse or claiming to be pursuing justice. Yet, if we pursue justice and righteousness while leaving God behind, what have we achieved? If “our side” wins, does that mean that God gets the glory? It isn’t clear to me that it does.
In today’s media environment, it could possibly be easy to lose perspective amidst all the data. For Christians to supply faithful testimony, we want to stay focused on the first task set before us: being and making disciples of Jesus Christ. As we learn to live under Christ’s authority and teach others to do the identical, we will likely be in a greater position to avoid the trimmings of media and to point out the world the difference Christ makes.
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