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. Read the rest of this entry »