Newspapers

Throughout most of history, governments have controlled the flow of public information. Ancient Rome produced written public announcements, and eighth-century Beijing published a daily News of the Palace. Later, great nobles in Europe employed writers to record their personal events. However, any news that came out of the palace was crafted to cast leaders in the best possible light. It was not until Johann Gutenberg’s invention of movable type in 1450 that ordinary citizens had the means to publish reports and opinions. Early broadsheets recorded Columbus’s discovery of the New World in 1492 and the English defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The number of private newspapers grew to about twenty in England by the mid-1600s. But as newspapers exercised more freedom to report and comment on issues, government leaders began to crack down. Parliament enacted laws prohibiting criticism of the government. The first newspaper in the American colonies, Public Occurrences in Boston, was shut down after its first edition criticized the government’s handling of the war with France. In a landmark case that laid a foundation for the freedom of the press, a jury in 1735 found a New York printer named John Peter Zenger not guilty of libeling the governor of the province. The jury decided that a person could not claim damages if the information, even if objectionable, was true. Newspapers grew in number and influence as America moved from a colony to a world power.

A hundred years ago, newspapers had a virtual monopoly on news and information. That is no longer the case. Today newspapers compete with network television, cable television, radio, “want-ad” flyers and on-line computer services for consumers (see Information Superhighway) and advertising dollars. However, the greatest threat to the newspaper industry is not competition with other media but rather competition for people’s time.

What Is a Newspaper?

A newspaper is a business. Some newspapers are privately owned; many belong to newspaper chains. Unlike radio and television, where advertising and marketing have tight control over station programming, newspapers have a long tradition of keeping editorial decisions free from the influence of advertising and marketing. As a business, newspapers must be responsive to two major customers: advertisers and readers. If an advertiser does not see results (e.g., customers spending more money at its store), the business will stop advertising in the newspaper. In the same way, if readers do not find what they like or like what they find, they will stop buying the newspaper.

A newspaper is an institution. The larger the paper, the more defined its editorial position will be. Newspapers with a national circulation, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, will have a clear editorial position on issues (liberal, conservative, moderate, etc.). In community newspapers (suburban dailies and weeklies), the editorial position may vary according to whoever is in charge at any given time.

A newspaper is a human enterprise. Hollywood often portrays reporters and editors as unethical cutthroats who will spare nothing—including the truth—to smear someone’s reputation all over the front page. Fortunately, the vast majority of journalists care deeply about being accurate, objective and fair. The First Amendment may guarantee freedom of the press, but libel laws hold journalists accountable: the information published must be true, and, if not, the errors must have been made without malice and after making every reasonable effort to confirm the information. Journalists are also restrained by their own consciences. Many journalists live in the communities their newspaper covers; they own homes, send their children to public schools, coach in the Little League and so on.

In summary, a newspaper is a human institution that is in the business of providing reliable information to other people.

How to Read a Newspaper

No one has the time to read every article and every advertisement in a newspaper, nor should they. Not everything in the paper is relevant to them, and some information may be harmful (1 Cor. 10:23).

Most newspapers today are designed for “scanning.” Charts, graphics and listings make it easy to find the weather report, stock prices, scores of games and TV schedules. The rest of the newspaper can be scanned by simply glancing at the headlines and the first one or two paragraphs of each story.

Scanning helps keep state, national and world news in perspective. It is possible to give too much time and energy to developments that are far away while ignoring the needs in our own communities. Henry David Thoreau noted how people were so fascinated with the idea of constructing a telegraph from Maine to Texas and laying a cable from America to Europe. “But Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate,” he wrote, and “perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough” (Walden, quoted in Postman, p. 65). In the same way today, much of the news, though fascinating, is irrelevant.

There is no single way to read a newspaper article. It depends to a large degree on the type of material: news, feature, opinion, entertainment and sports.

News. The six basic questions of a reporter are who, what, where, when, how and why. But the reader should expect to find answers to several hidden questions as well: “Who or what is the source of information?” Every news story has a source, and the reporter usually reveals whether the information comes from a government official, a witness, a police officer, a public meeting, a court document and so on. While the practice of using information from unnamed sources is controversial and sometimes wrongly employed, it has proven to be the only means of exposing the truth in some cases, particularly in stories about graft and corruption.

“How reliable is this information?” A newspaper is only as good as its information. If the paper consistently prints erroneous information, it will lose its credibility and eventually its readers. Recognizing this, most journalists make sure they have a document (a report, minutes of a meeting, court docket, etc.) and confirmation of information from a second person.

“Is the story fair?” Gathering and reporting news is a highly selective process. The reporter chooses which facts he or she has collected to include in the article and which information to emphasize. The editor decides how and where the story should run in the paper, thus assigning a value to it in comparison with other news in the paper that day. The reporter is not merely a “scribe”; rather, he or she is expected to interpret the significance of words and actions. There is a fine line between interpretation and opinion, and articles may reflect a bias. Often a reporter will not even be conscious of this bias (Bozell and Baker, p. 3).

Opinion. Newspapers offer opportunity on the opinion page for people to comment on issues. There are five formats for opinion: editorial, the official opinion of the newspaper; column, the opinion of an individual writer; political cartoon, the opinion of the cartoonist; guest column, the view of a responsible spokesperson; and letter to the editor, the opinion of any reader.

Entertainment and Sports. These are the playgrounds of a newspaper. Nothing in them is essential to daily living. Rather, they offer escape and fun. However, the articles in these sections often go to one of two extremes: they either make people into idols or they destroy the same human beings. Not knowing these people personally does not exempt us from the Bible’s warnings about slander and gossip: “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man’s inmost parts” (Proverbs 18:8). The key is to focus on what takes place on the field, stage or screen.

Features. Many articles in a newspaper focus not on what happened yesterday but rather on what is happening these days. These feature articles may run throughout the paper or in separate sections called Living, Lifestyle, Health, Business, Religion, Education and so on. Many provide information (about an unusual disease, selecting a college, deciding whether to refinance a home, etc.) that could help the reader or someone the reader knows. The articles generally reflect human-centered solutions to problems, which may not address the root causes and may even contradict Christian teachings.

How to Respond to Newspapers

• Keep newspapers in proper perspective. Newspapers have their shortcomings. They are often superficial in their coverage, arrogant in their opinions and focused on problems instead of solutions (though the same might also be said of many people outside of newspapers!). At worst, they are “unconsciously” part of what the late BBC commentator Malcolm Muggeridge called “a mighty brainwashing operation, whereby all traditional standards and values are being denigrated to the point of disappearing” (Muggeridge, p. 60). Sociologist Neil Postman is equally pessimistic about the influence of the media, but his criticism is focused primarily on television. The invention of television was no less revolutionary than the invention of the printing press, he says, because TV “changes the structure of public discourse” and is “creating new forms of truth-telling.” The image has become more important than the idea. As a result, he says, “the seriousness, clarity and above all, value of public discourse dangerously declines” (p. 29).

• Take part in the “public forum.” Newspapers, for all of their shortcomings, offer one of the few remaining forums for public discourse. In fact, the growing “public forum” movement among many newspapers aims to involve all segments of a community. Many papers set up “focus groups” to discuss issues and to hear feedback from readers. Many also are actively seeking more letters and guest columns from readers. Both provide opportunities for Christians to become involved in public discourse.

• Reflect on the world portrayed in the newspaper. Evil is obvious. It is evident in stories about tragedy, crime and injustice. But newspapers are also full of signs of hope: the birth of a child; a wedding announcement; a fiftieth anniversary celebration; a courageous battle to overcome illness; a dedicated teacher’s commitment; a church’s response to the poor and hungry. A newspaper may give a distorted view of the balance of good and evil, but that does not excuse us from our call to focus on “whatever is true, . . . noble, . . . right, . . . pure, . . . lovely, . . . admirable, . . . excellent or praiseworthy” (Phil. 4:8).

• Respond in some way to something you read. If “knowledge puffs up,” as the apostle Paul says (1 Cor. 8:1), Christians today should beware of an all-out “information explosion.” The daily news can place an oppressive weight on the human heart. But God does not intend for us to bear that weight on our own. It is Christ’s burden (Matthew 11:28-30). Though we shoulder one end of his yoke, our end is “easy” and “light.” The key is to shift the weight over to Christ in prayer, and only then, in Christ, to turn knowledge into an act of love. It can be as simple as cutting out a photograph of a friend’s child and sending it to them with a note sending a card to a neighbor graduating from high school, alerting a church member of an article about a medical condition he or she has just been diagnosed as having, or as involved as sending a check to help total strangers rebuild their home after a fire or writing a letter of encouragement to a social worker or police officer who works in the trenches of society’s most difficult and heart-wrenching conditions.

Newspapers are not perfect. Their view of reality is often distorted. And Christianity is seldom the defining viewpoint of an editorial board. But within each newspaper are stories of real people trying to make it through life the best they can. Some stories are inspiring; others are heartbreaking. To a heart that is willing to be broken and a will that is yielded to Christ, one newspaper contains enough opportunities for service and food for prayer to last most people a lifetime.

» See also: Citizenship

» See also: Comics

» See also: Community

» See also: Global Village

» See also: Information Superhighway

» See also: Mass Media

» See also: Reading

References and Resources

L. B. Bozell III and B. Baker, eds., And That’s The Way It Isn’t: A Reference Guide to Media Bias (Alexandria, Va.: Media Research Center, 1990); M. Muggeridge, Christ and the Media (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977); W. G. Pippert, An Ethics of News: A Reporter’s Search for Truth (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1989); N. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penguin Books, 1985).

—Stephen Crowe