PEACE AND THE PRESS IN A DIVIDED NATION

Who can we trust for our information, the building blocks of our worldview and even our attitudes towards our neighbors and community?

In “Unfreedom of the Press,” Mark Levin offers a sobering analysis with a warning:

• Unlike the early patriot press, today’s newsrooms and journalists are mostly hostile to America’s founding principles, traditions, and institutions. They do not promote free speech and press freedom, despite their self-serving and self-righteous claims.

Citing The Commission on Freedom of the Press organized in 1942 by Time and Life magazine publisher Henry Luce, Levin equates a free press with the health of a nation:

• “These [media] agencies can facilitate thought and discussion. They can stifle it. They can advance the progress of civilization or they can thwart it. They can debase and vulgarize mankind. They can endanger the peace of the world.”

The media can shape destiny. For example, under National Socialism, the media had continually proclaimed the inferiority and the mendacity of the Jews. When the Jews were finally sweep into the death camps, the public had already been convinced that such a move was necessary to combat evil. The same pertained to Germany’s invasions into Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Russia – each applauded by the German media.

Today, Republicans and Democrats have become polarized and even hostile to one another, and this is strongly associated with their regards for the media. Levin reports that:

• nearly 80 percent of Republicans distrust the media, while nearly 80 percent of Democrats trust the media.

Therefore, we are feeding from increasingly divided informational troughs. As a result, we are dangerously divided. However, it seems that the corruption of the media runs far deeper. Levin quotes Lara Logan who was a CBS News journalist and war correspondent from 2002 to 2018:

• “if there were any independent voices out there, any journalists who are not beating the same drum and giving the same talking points, then we pay the price. What is interesting . . . they cannot take down the substance of what you’re saying. They cannot go after the things that matter. So they smear you personally. They go after your integrity. They tear after your reputation as a person and a professional. They will stop at nothing. I am not the only one. And I am just, I am done, right, I am tired of it. And they do not get to write my story anymore. They do not get to speak for me. I want to say loudly and clearly to anybody who is listening, I am not owned...by the Left or the right.” (Fox interview, 2019)

Both sides want the power, but at what price? We cannot produce a better world by:

• Destroying others
• Destroying families, sexualizing children, turning them against their parents
• Destroying equality, truth, or justice

What is the answer? More accountability? Levin places the responsibility in the hands of a concerned public:

• It is surely not for the government to control the press, and yet the press seems incapable of policing itself... And we begin the process by informing ourselves about those institutions and individuals (and their practices and standards) who, by their own anointment, proclaim the high-minded obligation of informing us.

Will this relieve us of our self-destructive power struggle? I don’t think so. A more fundamental change is required, a change of heart, a supernatural change.

Let me try to explain. If our ultimate hope is in this world, we will not only disagree with our opponents, we will hate them for jeopardizing our earthly treasure and hope. However, if our treasure is unassailable, because it resides in the next world, protected by God, then we will not feel as threatened, even when our lives are at stake. This is why Jesus taught:

• "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19-20)

If we know that our hope is untouchable, so too will be our peace. I do not like the progressive agenda, but this hope has enabled me to care for the progressive and to show them the love of Christ.