“But seek first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
“The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice.” (Proverbs 12:15)
“Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance…The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Proverbs 1:5,7)

Fake News. Ponder this with me.

Fact: Many media professionals charged with researching, observing, and unbiasedly reporting events fail to adhere to the highest integrity of journalism. As mass media companies evolve (some would say devolve) from the grand ol’ print and major television networks tradition to digital dissemination, and Americans’ appetite hungers for a diet of short, sensational bites, profitability lies in “clicks.” How else can media companies compete for their share of clicks with YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok? They post something so sensational that our reptilian brain overrides logic and reacts with a click, and the site gets a ching-ching-ching to their bottom line. Do “reporters” and “journalists” take facts out-of-context, misrepresent, and embellish to make a more enticing click, stoking our fear and invigorating our gravitation towards group think? Happens far too often. This is indisputable and, for someone who studied journalism according high ethical standards, it sours my stomach. 

For the sake of seeking wisdom, let’s assess our tendency to categorize entire groups of media as always, and entirely dishing out fake (false) news. I can assure you, as a student in a top-5 Journalism program at a top-5 public university, they did not sort us into halves: “Okay, if you want to be a journalist that reports truth, go down this hall. All of you who want to do only fake news go down this other hall.” They didn’t then require the students down one or the other hall to only get jobs with certain media companies based on the designations of true or fake news. It has been a long time since I was doing my undergraduate studies in Journalism, but I can assure you this is not how it’s done. To think that half of all media reports “truth,” and the entire other half only reports falsehood is as ludicrous as thinking half our entire population is entirely in the right about everything and the other half entirely wrong about everything. Think about what we are saying when we conveniently label as false news things reported that we disagree with, but the news that reports in favor of our stance is of the utmost journalistic integrity. Now, is it true there are publishers, editors, and stakeholders that have a biased agenda and use their power to influence spin? I unequivocal believe yes, that is true. Is there validity in the claim that in general journalism/media skews in the direction of liberal bias? Based on my experience in journalism, as a student and then through firsthand experience, there is validity to that claim. Liberalism in the media was largely born out of the right to free speech, developed in the 20th Century with the media’s defense of the worker’s (a historically a liberal constituent) right to speak out against corporate (a historically conservative constituent) abuses. However, as social media and internet radio and tv have evolved, both liberal and conservative fringe thinkers have greater access to media platforms that make them appear as reliable sources of news.

The landscape of journalism and mass media has been flung into a kind of anarchy with the advent of cable, social and internet news media. Our standards and insistence on credentials of writers and reporters have eroded as we more readily lap up rivers of bias that flow out of social media, blogs, talk radio, podcasts, and talking TV heads. We lazily accept as fact anything that agrees with us, and are rarely intentional to dig for wisdom. We have become pawns of propaganda, bewitched by blowhards.

We owe it to ourselves as Americans, in a country where information is freely at our fingertips, to seek the truth for ourselves. We can access terabytes of information right from our phones. When we dare to leave the orbit of agreeable and like-minded media, no matter how painful, we may just expand our understanding of what is true and what is fake. Here are some practices that might deliver us from captivity to one-sided media and half-truths:

1. Eliminate emotionally manipulating tactics used by media: sights, sounds, and sizzle, such as sound effects and graphics. Try turning off the tv and radio and, instead, read the news. Turn off the news notifications on your phone. They are only feeding you things you are more likely to click on, usually upsetting and stressful topics. Instead, browse and choose articles you want to read/watch/hear.
2. Know the difference between an opinion piece and news reporting. Know the difference between a news article and a blog. If someone is ranting, belittling, and accusing, it is probably an opinion piece disguised as news. Do a quick check of a writer’s credentials.
3. Consume a balanced diet of media. This can be hard to stomach. It is much, much easier for us to only chow down on reporting that lines up with our own biases. I have the apps for two local tv stations, CNN, FoxNews, ABC News, BBC, and NPR on my phone. If there is an event or issue I’m interested in, I’ll try to read about it in multiple media. I believe the truth is probably somewhere in between them all. At the very least it exposes my own bias that inhibits me from seeking the truth.
4. Begin with the assumption that all “news” is “fake,” and avoid the temptation to rapidly share and spin forward things on social media without first verifying its validity. When we do this, we are only multiplying the fake news we claim to detest.
5. Resist elevating your news sources above God. FoxNews and CNN in many ways have become idols. So have our allegiance to “conservative” and “liberal” media. We are more passionate and defensive about what they tell us in than in what the Bible teaches.

Finally, friends, I encourage you to embrace God’s instruction to seek wisdom for yourself. For me, as a Christ follower, that means getting real with myself about how much I know about God’s instructions for us in the Bible, especially as it relates to the person, teaching, and actions of Jesus Christ. We are designed to seek and discern wisdom, not be helpless receptacles of someone else’s interpretation. But, hey, this is only a blog…so seek wisdom for yourself.