A Christmas legend, or a licence to lie?
In a remarkable agreement across the theological spectrum, Dave Walker, Peter Kirk and John Richardson all rightly leap to Rowan Williams’ defence in the face of sloppy reporting of his Christmas interview. They are right to do so, because this kind of story seems to be self-propagating. Today in the Times, the slur continues with Gerard Baker:
The retreat continues, despite the best efforts of the Anglicans to keep making concessions to disbelieving modernity, as the Archbishop of Canterbury did again this week with his observation that we were obliged to treat the Christmas Story really as just a legend. Like Alfred and the burnt cakes, I suppose.
I left this comment on Baker’s post late last night / early this morning:
Have you ever considered checking your sources? I listened to the interview with the Archbishop, and he said that the Bible simply describes Magi coming to visit. It doesn’t say that they were kings, it doesn’t say there were three of them, and it doesn’t say one was black. It was all these additional details he described as legend. I suppose “Archbishop defends the Bible’s account of Christmas” won’t fit your template.
This kind of sloppy journalism is in part due to the fact that journalists often are, and think their readers likewise to be, very simple souls. So, to prevent the danger of too much thinking, they have a set of standard story templates: meta-narratives into which each specific news item may be squeezed. One of these is “Anglican bishops don’t really believe in God.” The corollary of this is that because they are a) too nice to disagree with you and b) too wimpish to do so, a journalist can pour any shovel-full of libelous shit over them, and they frequently do so.
I doubt Baker actually reads his comments, but even if he does, he’s a journalist, so I expect him to entirely ignore the facts even when they’re pointed out to him. But I suppose, since it’s Christmas, I can always dream that somewhere, some day, a journalist might print a retraction.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:33 pm
Hi. Good blog … interesting and challanging.
Two thoughts have sprung to mind as I reflected on this post:
1. Is “he’s a journalist, so I expect him to entirely ignore the facts even when they’re pointed out to him” a meta-narrative?
2. I understand a little better the frustrations polititians must feel with mis-reporting that leads them to allow spin-doctors to dictate policy.
Chris
December 21st, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Wow, Doug. I’m stunned that you would categorically castigate journalists as if they are all cut from the same rotten cloth. Maybe the ones writing for the big, liberal rags have devolved into cretins, but many of us write for papers in small cities where the community depends on us to tell its stories. We are laboring long hours for little pay to get the truth out there. I find my biggest rewards when I go into a church and see a story I wrote cut out and pinned to the bulletin board–or when I learn my reporting on a controversial topic provoked city leaders to call a special council meeting to address a need–or when I get a chance to dig into what’s really going on at the school board meetings so I can douse ugly rumors with the truth. There is no standard template for these stories. And the people in my community hold me accountable.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Journalists work with extremes. Any position usually must conform to one or the other pole in order to create a wonderfully static dialectic. It is clarity at the expense of truth since it distorts the intent of the speaker. This is what media has come to especially in the US as well. So-called news programs are loaded with pundits who actually create polarity of positions by giving “balance”. What this balance consists of is a definition of poles that likely do not exist but are fabricated in order to stir up controversy. Why? Ratings and advertising. The more controversy you can stir up by getting folks to disagree about everything, the more people will sit back and not only watch the fight, but participate in it as well. More viewers, more publicity, more advertising dollars. This is why I consume publicly funded and non-profit news sources like National Public Radio and even the Christian Science Monitor. US sources like Fox and MSNBC spread fictions more than meaningful reflections of reality.
December 21st, 2007 at 4:27 pm
Excellent post, Doug. I may post on the story myself if I get a moment in amongst packing during the day. I listened to the interview and was actually struck by how conservative the archbishop was. I did begin to wonder, while listening, whether papers would be listening out to warp his remarks into something he is not saying (e.g. as the Sunday Telegraph did with his remarks on the Tsunami three years ago), and lo and behold, here we go again. It is a model of how little one can trust many (not all) journalists. If they are this sloppy in an area we actually know something about, how far can we trust them in areas where we do not have the requisite expertise?
December 21st, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Okay, I admit I might have been a little unfair to speak as though all journalists do this - it is indeed another meta-narrative. Unfortunately, it has become all too true in my experience, even in many local papers in the UK, as well as on the big national ones. It seems to be part of their competing for a declining readership in a sound-bite culture. There also seems to be a culture where a journalist judges their success by whether other journalists pick up the story they broke, and run it with the original spin. If anyone deplores the culture of spin in politics today, I’m afraid it has grown out of a necessary attempt to get a pre-emptive spin in before the media puts a negative one on it. Apologies to those who actually report the news instead of try to make it.
December 22nd, 2007 at 5:20 am
Apology accepted!
I can understand your frustatration. Thankfully, my editor would never let me get by with such malarky even if I had the chutzpah to try it.
Speaking of spin politics, I live in Iowa and we’re two weeks away from the “first in the nation” caucus. It’s pretty hard to practice Philippians 4:8 with all the intra-party rhetorical bludgeoning going on. I can’t imagine how nasty it’s going to get when we get down to two candidates from opposite parties. I’m about ready to become an anarchist.
December 24th, 2007 at 1:21 am
To Beyond Words
Unfortunately, in the UK there is less regional press that publishes much in the way of national news. I doubt that the Archbishop’s comments made it into my local paper, school closures and Christmas shopping are more likely to sell than religion any day. However, had they, and had they been misinterpreted I would have had more opportunity to correct them than with a national newspaper.
I’m looking forward to watching your elections though.