I recently had the pleasure of reading Marvin Olasky’s book on present-day news media entitled Telling the Truth: How to Revitalize Christian Journalism (available online at no cost here). Olasky is best known as the editor-in-chief of World magazine. His insights on journalism are particularly noteworthy because he happens to have two descriptive characteristics that are rarely put together nowadays – “Christian” and “journalist.” The current climate of journalism dictates that all who write must be “objective,” which has come to mean possessing a strong enough left-wing bias to please the editors at the newspaper or magazine you happen to be working for. Olasky trumps that by showing just how a reporter can be both an unequivocal Christian and a professional journalist at the same time.
I found particularly interesting an essay in Appendix C called “The Decline of American Journalism.” Did you know that, once upon a time, the New York Times was not only conservative, but unabashedly Christian? Apparently, much of the shift to liberalism at the Times occurred during the 20th century. Prior to that, the newspaper was owned and operated by Christians. Hard to imagine? Just look at a reporting campaign instituted by the paper in the 1800s to combat the illicit abortion business in New York City:
Abortion was officially illegal but nevertheless rampant in New York City from the 1840s through the 1860s. Times editorials complained that the “perpetration of infant murder . . . is rank and smells to heaven.” But little was being done about it until the Times sent one of its reporters, Augustus St. Clair, to carry on an undercover investigation of Manhattan’s abortion businesses. For several weeks St. Clair and “a lady friend” visited the most-advertised abortionists in New York, posing as a couple in need of professional services. The result was an August 23, 1871, story headlined “The Evil of the Age.”
Near the end of this section on the Times, we find this:
A reading of the New York Times through the mid-1870s shows that editors and reporters wanted to glorify God by making a difference in this world. They did not believe it inevitable that sin should dominate New York City or any other city. They were willing to be controversial. One Times anti-abortion editorial stated, “It is useless to talk of such matters with bated breath, or to seek to cover such terrible realities with the veil of a false delicacy . . . From a lethargy like this it is time to rouse ourselves. The evil that is tolerated is aggressive.”
The editorial concluded that “the good . . . must be aggressive too.”
That’s a powerful quote and testimony to the necessity of Christian involvement in every area of life, Christian journalism included. Olasky has a vision to see journalism in American revitalized by followers of Jesus Christ. I definitely recommend checking out his book.