I am a strong believer in the Fourth Estate – the press and its necessary place in society. Journalism has always been an essential component of any healthy democracy, a fact that any dictator knows very well. The press should always be independent and without bias, able to freely critique the government and the corporate sector and hold them accountable to the citizenry. When it works, it works exceptionally well. When it breaks, it breaks an important part of a healthy society.

Media bias has become a thing. I suppose it’s always been around to a certain degree or another, but these days it seems so brazenly in our face that it must have penetrated almost every aspect of journalism. When I think of why it’s gotten this bad, I realize that there are a lot of parties to blame. Big corporations; money; government; the “system”; maybe even bad capitalism. Yet when I really think about it, I think the very people that journalism is meant to represent – the citizenry – may be the very people who have allowed journalism to get to the state that it has. In other words, it’s mostly our own fault.

How? We wanted it to cost us nothing. And delivered in the most convenient way possible, all for nothing. But it has certainly cost us something: good, non-biased, factual news.

But how on earth did we ever expect that anyone could provide for us proper journalism – with investigative reporting and the whole lot – for nothing? The truth is that that’s impossible. The general idealism of the Internet believed (and still believes) everything should be free, especially media (movies, music, news, etc.). Did we not think that people actually need to be paid to do something well?

The idea was that if enough people are reading a publication or a story, that publication could sell tons of advertising. So it all became about the numbers – views, hits, quick reads. It became about quantity over quality. And we’re now surprised? So I’m joining the rising chorus that is announcing the death of free journalism. And I say, actually, good riddance.

If we want publications to be less biased, and if we want higher factual reporting, and if we want journalism to represent us as the citizenry, we can’t let either the government fund it or the corporations fund it. So that throws out state-funded news (obviously, a bad idea) and it also throws out straight-up corporate-funded news. (Obviously, a publication has to be owned by someone, but how they make a profit and pay for it is what we are talking about here.)

Advertising has shown to not work online, and I wonder if it’s ever really worked, to be honest. Buzzfeed’s latest layoffs are a case in point. (I’ve never really seen Buzzfeed as a very reliable source anyway: too biased.) Firstly, there are just too many players in the digital market, and secondly, Facebook and Google and the likes have taken most of the pie, with smarter algorithms and the like. More than that, advertising generally seems to force a drop in quality, because what’s more important invariably to an editor and shareholders is the advertising. That’s why Buzzfeed is mostly what it is.

That leaves only two models left – subscription or donations. Given that most people don’t see the value of good journalism until it’s gone, subscription models are, in my mind, the best solution. The trouble with donations is they are liable to corruption. This is because it is generally only rich benefactors who donate, while the rest of the citizenry doesn’t quite see the value until it’s too late. Rich benefactors often develop an agenda and the pressure is on to please them to a degree, and then we have some sort of bias all over again. Also, benefactors often change their mind or life happens. Mike Bloomberg, for example, will try to sell off Bloomberg if he runs for president. It doesn’t make sense for it all to be in the hands of one guy.

The New York Times and the Economist are examples of big names that are finding big success with subscriptions. Even the blogging platform, Medium, now offers a subscription service to get the best blogs. I have lots of hope for this as I really believe blogging is underrated. Reuters‘ Digital News Report showcases the trends: people are starting to be happy to pay for news again.

Change is in the air with many media companies shifting models towards higher quality content and more emphasis on reader payment. We find that the move to distributed content via social media and aggregators has been halted — or is even starting to reverse, while subscriptions are increasing in a number of countries. Meanwhile notions of trust and quality are being incorporated into the algorithms of some tech platforms — as they respond to political and consumer demands to fix the reliability of information in their systems.

– Reuters Digital News Report 2018

So it seems that the trends are going the right way, and it’s partly, I believe, because the competition is on not for quantity but for quality. At last. It used to be all about the hits, the reads, the masses… now there is a realization that quality trumps quantity, especially when people are willing to pay. When I was working in the journalism business full time, we pumped out twenty articles each in a day as journalists. We tried our best to keep the quality up there, but to be honest, that’s not possible when the objective is to get as many stories out as possible. Eventually you’re writing those stupid list articles (“listicles”) that Buzzfeed became famous for, or you’re just relying way too much on press releases, and a dozen other things that made (and make) me cringe.

Micro-transactions might work. See Blendle. There you pay a couple of cents per article, and it has a wide variety from big publications. But I’m still not entirely convinced that people like to pay for journalism that way, although I hold great hope for the platform. What people do like is convenience – and I think most people would rather subscribe to a name they trust and have the news delivered to them. Even at a couple of cents an article, I’m still wondering to myself when I see something that gets my interest there: is it worth me paying for this one?

I really liked what Amazon were experimenting with at one stage – Kindle newspapers. You can still get them, but it appears most publications have not jumped on the platform, and Amazon seems to push its magazines more than newspapers. (Even the Washington Post, owned by Bezos, appears to push its app more than its Kindle newspaper.) I subscribed to the Mail & Guardian for awhile and I found it a wonderful experience. You wake up in the morning and there’s your paper delivered to you, on your e-ink Kindle. Since it’s not an LCD screen, you can enjoy not straining your eyes, and read your paper in a relaxed way, without messages popping up and distractions when you’re on your phone and tablet. I always thought that newspapers could maybe subsidize a Kindle to year-long subscribers. But it hasn’t seemed to have taken off as well as I thought it could.

But all this shows that – like with movies and music – the days of free content are coming to an end. I subscribe to a music streaming service, and I’ll never look back. All the effort of having to store your own music and label it appropriately etc. is no longer something I need to worry about. I also subscribe to Netflix, and while I don’t use it as much as I’d like due to my interests, it’s so much better and more convenient than trying to store your own movies on a hard drive. Like with Netflix, once it becomes more common practice to pay for news, you can bet the quality will go up as the competition changes. How wonderful would it be if newspapers jockeyed for being known as the least biased, the most factual, the most reasonable, the most thoughtful? I hope (and pray) those days are coming – and I think they will. While not all of journalism should cost us (local news might be another story), I do think that most of it should. And if we would pay for it we would do ourselves – and our society – a good service.

Photo by Flipboard on Unsplash

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying,

3 “Let us burst their bonds apart
and cast away their cords from us.”

4 He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.

5 Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,

6 “As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.”

7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.

8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”

10 Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.

12 Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

This is part of a synchroblog on the civil war in Syria set up by Steve Hayes, who wanted to solicit Christian responses to the Syrian civil war. I’ve opened up with Psalm 2 to highlight the fact that throughout all of history, and throughout history to come, the nations will continue to rage and their raging, even when they’re fighting themselves, is ultimately a rage against God and his ways. Ultimately, this show will go on until Jesus returns.

Nations live in peace and live in war, to various degrees. As leaders come and go, policies and models change, every nation will have times in its history where it will rage against God. And sometimes, in that rage, they’ll go to war – with themselves and with others.

Does that all sound harsh? Well, we’re not exactly dealing with an easy subject. But wars are ultimately the result of our deep, human problems, and there’s no denying that.

When we try and ascertain who is right and who is wrong, it’s often difficult to really even know, because the whole thing is just one big mess and no one is really in the right, or the wrong. Sure, it’s been wrong for the Syrian government to act as it has for so many years. But both the innocent and the guilty suffer because of the same underlying problem: rebellion against God.

And so the first part of how a Christian should respond is this: love the innocent and the guilty, because quite honestly, we’re all guilty in some way in the end.

Christian views of the Syrian war and the U.S. involvement

Last week, when all the ho-hum in America was about Obama and his decision to bomb Syria as a warning about chemical warfare (a card I think he played to force Russia’s hand), Christianity Today published an article entitled Three Christian Perspectives on [the] Syrian War. I checked it out but was left scratching my head. I thought: Is this the best the Evangelical Christian world can come up with?

It’s a quick read so head over to the link. But if you don’t have the time, here’s the crux: none of the three views had anything to say at all about the idea of separating Church and State. There’s this underlying belief that the government is supposed to respond in a Christian way. But how on earth can any government respond in a Christian way? Was Jesus’ message of love to your neighbour and abandoned worship to God a message to governments? A blueprint for what rules of law and legislation a government should institute? No, the message was to individuals who make up a group called the Church. This group is God’s called nation within the nations; God’s called-out people within the peoples. We are citizens of another Kingdom regardless of where we are born because, if you recall, we are born again.

We belong to another King and we follow and obey Him relentlessly. In our obedience to Him, we do submit to our authorities (1 Peter 2) and we give to the emperor what is the emperor’s (Luke 20), but we do such things in freedom because we are actually citizens of another Kingdom.

There has never been any other Christian nation besides the Church and there never will be another Christian nation. America is not, and has never, been a Christian nation. No government on this world has ever been a Christian government. South Africa certainly has never been one, which is partly why I get nervous around what some Christian organisations are trying to do about the recent spanking débâcle. Jesus’ intention for the Church is that it would never be a government but be under the government of Jesus, living out his law of love to the world, regardless of who we are and where we’re from.

Christians are called to be pacifists in their personal lives (remember where Jesus said we should turn the other cheek to our enemies?) but no government is ever called to turn the other cheek. Neither is a government ever to rule over its people – a government is meant to protect its people. That’s how we all know it should be, but we all know that all governments are corrupt. In the end, governments are ruled by people, and it’s those people God is interested in and it’s those people who will give an account to God, not to us. God is not interested in democracy, socialism or our just war theories, or any philosophy. He is interested in people. So we should be too.

Christians are to live where they live and be working within the nations, almost like a neutral force, to bring healing to people, and reconciliation between God and people, which will ultimately bear the fruit of reconciliation between people. The Church is not called to be a political peace-keeping movement of any sort.

This is why Christians need to stop trying to “Christianize” cultures through legislation. When we do that, we just become another one of the many forces looking to acquire power and use it for our own means. Even the church largely failed when it was given political power at one stage in Western history. (It is good to note, however, that medieval history is hardly as bad as many of the movies make it out to be. It’s called dramatic effect, folks!)

When we work for justice, which is necessary, we must remember that every system is, in the end, never going to be perfect. It’ll only be perfect when Jesus wraps up all of history in the end and those who trust in Him are made new, while the wicked and sin are dealt with appropriately. Justice can never work as a system, justice only works when someone perfectly just rules. This is the great hope for our faith and ultimately what we’re pointing people to. We are to be involved, but must remember, always, where our first commitments lie. Otherwise we just become part of the problem.

Others writing on this topic

This post is part of a synchroblog (syncronised blog) in which various people write about the same general theme from different points of view, and thus help one to see the bigger picture. Follow the links below to see the other posts. More links may be added later, as more people add their contributions.  If you are participating in the synchroblog, please copy the links below and paste them to the end of our own post.

1. Fr John D’Alton (Antiochian Orthodox) of Fr John D’Alton on THE SYRIAN CIVIL WAR AND RESPONSES TO IT
2. Richard Fairhead (missional, evangelical, post/protestant, liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical, charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational, depressed- yet hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian) of Relational Journey on Who would Jesus bomb?
3. Steve Hayes (Orthodox Christian) of Khanya on Syrian civil war: no good outcome?

Artificial hearts with no pulse that keep people alive; augmented vision; cellphone implants; insects controlled with remote control. Does that sound like sci-fi to you? Well, it isn’t.

I wrote on the topic of Cyborg technology today for Telkom Do Gaming.

The heart is an incredibly difficult organ to reproduce artificially because it’s constantly beating. Any artificial materials that will need to go through the work a heart actually does seem to break down very quickly. So the doctors in question have decided to address the beating problem, looking at creating an artificial heart that does the job but doesn’t beat. Rather, it provides a continuous flow throughout the body. And apparently it works.

Read more at Do Gaming

Mail & Guardian’s Thought Leader has published a post of mine on the Media and objectivity. Thanks Thought Leader!

The media continues to be under the spotlight, not just locally but also in the US where questions about objectivity are moving to the forefront. Perhaps if there is anywhere in the world where these questions must be asked it’s in the US where, in my opinion, so much of the media has become immature, sensationalist and polarising.

But is the media like this because it’s reflecting society, or is American society (especially in the realm of politics) becoming more polarising because it’s reflecting the media? I’m beginning to think the latter is more the case. And what does this mean for SA?

Read the rest of the post at Thought Leader and comment