One day, investigators were at of their many questions about some of the many matters into which they have inquired, lo, these many days. During a break in the interrogation, one of them stood reading the titles of the books on shelves lining a wall. One caught his eye — “Knowing God” by an evangelical theologian, J.I. Packer. No stranger to the evangelical faith himself, the investigator opened it, and noted on the inside of the cover a few scribbled words. The book was a gift to President Clinton when he was Arkansas' governor. The inscription named the giver.
I, the giver, am Political Editor of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a position that became mine when I took early retirement at the end of 1996 from The Associated Press, where I worked more than 34 years, including seven as Chief of Bureau in Little Rock and 20 as the AP’s state Capitol staffer in Little Rock. At some point during those 20 years, I gave Packer’s book to Clinton, thinking him somewhat shallow in understanding the Bible and theology. I hoped the book would do him good. He has been a steadfast church-goer through the years as governor and president, so perhaps he has gained theological depth. I hope so.
I am a Christian. I am a journalist. It was as a journalist that I had contact with Bill Clinton. It was as a Christian that I had become familiar with Packer’s book. I had a desire as a Christian to give the book to Clinton. But I also had a desire as a journalist to give it to him — to advance my relationship with him. My theory as a journalist has been to know public officials not in a narrow way but as whole human beings, including the irreligious beliefs. The more you understand them, the deeper will be your insight into them, and the better you can report on them.
I have made similar efforts with others whose paths I crossed. Isn’t that what Christians do — make an effort to advance each person’s understanding of the Bible and their knowledge of God? I can’t say that I remember all such efforts, so I’m not sure I can defend all of them from a journalistic point of view. For example, I was surprised in 1996 when a Little Rock attorney defending Gov. Jim Guy Tucker in a criminal trial last year reminded me that I had given him a New International Version translation years earlier. I had forgotten doing so.
I am not, however, a Christian-journalist, by which I mean a person who attempts to advance Christian causes by coloring the content of what he reports in print. Some of my Christian friends desire me to be the hyphenated version. They want me to use my access to newsprint to promote Christian causes. I resist them, cheerfully but unequivocally.
There is no higher calling than being a believer, a child of God. There are “Christian causes” with which I heartily agree and which I support with my money and my time and my energy and my advocacy. There are others with which I completely disagree, dismayed that such base objectives could be labeled “Christian.” But my attitude toward causes is not translated into the stories I write. I act on behalf of Christian causes through other aspects of my life (things I do in my personal life, including “witnessing” and teaching adults most Sundays at church and counseling from a biblical basis and making donations and praying and handing out quality books that may be useful to acquaintances, such as the book the investigator found on a White House shelf) . Of course, sometimes I do it in regard to “public persons” I encounter in my work as a journalist. I think it helps me as a journalist, and certainly it helps me as a Christian.
My role as a journalist is to do journalism, free of political, religious or other bias, and to do it with independence, balance, fairness, thoroughness, aggressiveness and all the other characteristics with which good journalism should be conducted. I regard it as a Christian duty to do journalism that way. To do any other kind of journalism would be to fail in my duty as a Christian to render to my employer the best that God has equipped me to do.
My faith is ever with me (even when l am laboring under some sinful attitude that results in my neglecting the truth that I embrace as “Christianity;” no human being is always true to his beliefs — the Lord Jesus Christ being the pre-eminent exception; like the Apostle Paul in Romans 7, I find that I do not always do what I think is right, nor do my actions always reflect what I truly love at my core; when I come to my senses and realize in those occasions that I have strayed from what I believe, then I repent and return to a better course).
I was ordained as a minister through an independent Baptist church, which I pastored for years. Now I serve in a lesser role in a nondenominational congregation. I have done the things pastors do — marry, bury, preach, teach, counsel, pray with and pray for and be prayed for and the like. Once, I was even excommunicated (but the church that acted against me later repented of that). I have been involved in biblical studies in more than a passing way. More than 1,500 volumes on biblical matters fill dozens of shelves in my home. I regard the Bible as wholly true, without error. (In my experience, those who fault the Bible’s credibility tend to have the least knowledge of what it actually says. And in many cases the alleged discrepancies may be resolved through the use of reasonable principles of interpretation.)
My Bible tells me that it is wrong to lie. That makes it easy for me to answer the question currently being debated in journalism: Is it okay to lie? “No. ” Although I agree with those who say it makes journalism look bad to endorse the use of lies in our pursuit of truth, my answer isn’t based on how it looks. Lying is, simply, wrong, because God (Whose word is revealed in the Bible) says it’s wrong.
So, when somebody asks me to go off-the-record, the material is really off-the-record. It can’t be used, and I can’t reveal who told it to me. If they allow me to use material, but not allow me to attribute it to them, then I will keep my word on that matter, as well. My wife and I reached an understanding many years ago that the day may come when I find myself caught between a pledge that I made to a source (“OK, I won’t reveal your identity”) and a demand that may be made by the state (“name your source”), and that my course of action will be to refuse the demand of the state. I will accept whatever consequences ensue, including imprisonment. It is not a prospect I find attractive. I am thankful that so far I have never had to face it. Although I have a duty as a Christian to respect the governing authorities (Romans 13:1, for example: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”), and respect certainly implies giving them reasonable obedience, I will be caught between that duty, on one hand, and my duty to keep my word, on the other hand (“Simply let your ’Yes’ be ’Yes’ and your ’No’ ’No,”' (Matt 5:37; etc.). In treating off-the-record material as off-the-record, I am no different from honest non-Christian journalists, except that part of my reason for doing the right thing stems from my faith.
In some situations, my background as an amateur theologian who is a Christian equips me to deal with some prevailing issues with a background that other journalists may lack. For example, on the abortion issue, is there a clear case in Scripture for the proposition that abortion is wrong? And, if so, where is it? And if it is Psalm 139:13 (“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”) or Luke 1:44 (“As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.”), how do those passages justify a belief that abortion is wrong in a world where millions of ova, fertilized and otherwise, naturally expire in the normal course of life? (In posing these questions, I don’t mean that there isn’t a case; I only mean that when it comes to that issue as a matter of journalism, I ask the questions that ought to be asked, and can deal with the interpretive issues that may arise, regardless of what my personal views may be on the issue, and sometimes I put believers in awkward spots with the thoroughness of my questioning of the point of view I would be widely presumed to support.)
Biblical analogies probably cross my mind in journalistic matters more than the minds of others, simply because I so frequently read the Bible. Once, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down an anti-abortion amendment on grounds that its use of the phrase “unborn child” was deemed to be “partisan coloring” that would mislead people who don’t think of the contents of the womb as a “child.” It seemed to me that everyone is familiar with the loose use of the word “child” to represent the fetus. I wrote an analysis piece that suggested tongue-in-cheek that perhaps we needed to revise the well-known account of a very famous pregnancy and make it, “Mary was found to be great with fetus.”
Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas is both a politician and a Baptist minister. I find myself examining what he says not only as a journalist covering a politician but also a journalist covering a Baptist minister who is a politician. I ponder how his words mesh with principles I know he believes, like, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31) and “men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken” (Matt 12:36).
When Huckabee declined to sign a bill because it referred to natural disasters as “acts of God,” I recognized this was a notable news story, regardless of what effect reporting the story might have on him (a professing Christian) and on Christianity in general. We never know the good that God may bring about through the events of life and, therefore, we ought to report them with accuracy and completeness. As it happens, I personally do believe that storms are “acts of God” — though that does not mean they are necessarily acts of wrath or vengeance, because God accomplishes more than we dream, both by what we regard as “bad” and what we regard as “good.”
Am I, because of my Christian faith, apt to be a dupe of “Christians” or Christian “leaders”? I think not. I offer two examples:
When one of the organizations connected with Pat Robertson asserted that The Associated Press had described fundamentalist Christians in a negative way, I thought the claim unlikely, based on my long experience with the AP. But I checked it out anyway (experience with the AP leads one to check things out). What I found was that the offending statement had not been made by the AP, but by a man who was speaking generally about fundamentalists of diverse sorts in an AP story about a university study of “fundamentalism” as manifested in a variety of cultures.
When a group connected with Dr. James Dobson, President of Focus on the Family, a conservative evangelical organization, got some facts wrong in a newsletter that referred to a St. Louis school district controversy over whether a child had been stopped from saying grace at lunchtime at a public school, I wrote the newsletter group and questioned the accuracy of some of the details that had been given. I received a reply thanking me for my interest, but indicating no interest in correcting the mistake. Consequently, I have little trust in that group’s newsletter anymore. (That doesn’t mean that Dr. Dobson doesn’t do many good things; it means only that there has been a credibility slip as I view things.)
Sometimes I have to try to help others to understand that my life as a Christian and my role as a journalist are not exactly the same thing.
As I explained to Governor Huckabee on one occasion, as a private individual I may give him every benefit of every doubt, but as a journalist it is my duty to ask, not to assume that I know what motivates him and what the facts are. I am not there to protect or to skewer him. I am there to be a journalist; let the chips fall as they may. Then I will be doing my Christian duty.
Because of my faith, I have no interest in what some editors call “piling on,” pulling together negative stuff in order to pound some public figure. My attitude is, “Do the story; do it right; do it thoroughly; and move on.” That does not, however, mean that I bypass legitimate stories, nor that I fail to pursue new angles to developing stories. And I don’t mind calling some journalism what it is — shoddy. I feel no obligation to pronounce all that we do “good.”
Being a journalist is not always a way to make friends. Sometimes I have come under attack from subjects of the news (and sometimes from colleagues or even co-workers). When that happens, I aim to bear in mind the admonition of the Lord not to seek revenge. (It can be so tempting to give tit for tat!) My trust is in God and His promise to render whatever vengeance will be appropriate at the time when vengeance is to be administered. I always hold out the possibility that in due course a person may repent of the harmful things he did to me, in which case there should be joy and no revenge at all.
I remember a journalist years ago who left in anger from a news conference at which the governor had publicly confronted him about some of the reporter’s actions. Fuming later in the state Capitol press room, the reporter declared, “That’s going to cost him two — TWO — Sunday columns.” He meant that he would write negative things in two of his Sunday columns about the governor. I told the reporter two things: one, he was foolish to announce such an intention; two, he was wrong to let that attitude of retaliation affect what he would do as a journalist.
Public figures don’t always like what we say about them. We don’t always like what they say about us. But it builds a journalist’s character to feel the sting of reproof now and then. I know that because the Good Book says that when pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom (Proverbs 11:2). I suppose you could say that, too, is a part of how my faith affects me as a journalist.