Saturday, June 21, 1997

Christian journalism should be concerned with truth

By Michael O'Connor / Abilene Reporter-News

A former colleague asked me to read a book given to her by her thesis advisor. I had never heard of him, but I've never heard of lots of people who are supposed to be reknown in their fields.

The book was supposed to be about how to do Christian journalism and was written by Marvin Olasky. Part of the book was basic journalism stuff - how to gather information, how to structure a story, how to write the story, how to edit for clarity. To the extent that Olasky stuck to these topics, the book was OK, though not outstanding.

The other half of the book was Olasky's philosophy of doing "Christian" journalism. He decried the state of journalism in Christian publishing, saying most of it was awful, tending toward feel-good, PR reporting. As I recall, he gave no concrete examples of all this bad journalism, surprising because if it is as ubiquitous as Olasky says, he should have had no shortage of illustrations to work with.

Olasky teaches journalism at the University of Texas and also publishes a conservative Christian magazine, "World." Not surprisingly, Olasky insists "World" does Christian journalism the right way, and all the examples of how to do Christian journalism came from that publication. I inferred that he believes "World" is the only Christian publication doing proper Christian journalism.

Olasky's premise is that Christian reporters should abandon the traditional journalistic view of objectivity, which he believes modern journalism has abandoned anyway, and report out of their own Christian perspective. Though he didn't say so clearly, I understood him to be saying that reporters should be this way regardless of the publication they work for.

Though he insists his viewpoint is biblical, he gave no scriptural justification for his position. The whole tenor of the book was, "I'm an expert; I'm a Christian; and I say this is the way journalism should be done, so do it that way."

Some consideration was given to making sure a story was accurate and reflected truth as far as the reporter could ascertain it, but Olasky made it clear that having an agenda and pursuing it - to show how Democrats' welfare programs were dismal failures, for instance - was more important.

So I was not surprised to find that "World" was at the forefront of the effort to torpedo a gender-neutral version of the popular New International Version of the Bible. Nor was I surprised to find that the reporting may have been less than accurate - I haven't read any of it so I hesitate to condemn it outright.

Olasky's viewpoint disturbed me. I read a couple of Christian publications and find that they do credible journalism. One of them is admittedly evangelical in its focus, and it does not hesitate to attack viewpoints it considers wrong.

But the magazine also is careful to explain the position it disagrees with and articulate the other view. It also reports on newsworthy events, including scandals within the Christian community, and receives a fair amount of criticism from readers for doing so. The critics believe a Christian publication shouldn't expose negative events in the Christian community.

But those critics should go back and read their Bibles. Few, if any, biblical heroes are depicted as perfect. Their warts are available for eternal public inspection. The point of Scripture is the transforming power of God's grace, not the heroic spirituality of his people.

In simplest terms, the Bible tells the story of people and their interaction with God, and it doesn't sugarcoat the story. This is the duty of anyone who wants to attempt "Christian" journalism. In fact, the duty of any journalist is to tell the stories of the people who inhabit the communities they report on and to tell those stories truthfully.

To the extent that Olasky encourages journalists to find stories that show the interaction between God and people and tell those stories truthfully, he does Christian journalism a service. To the extent that he pursues an agenda simply because it's his agenda, covered with Christian jargon though it may be, he negates all that is Christian in Christian journalism.