Presidential 'Audacity and Recklessness'
The
problem with The Galli Report is this: I have to
compose it by Tuesday night, but it isn't published until
Friday. A lot can happen in three days, which gets me into
trouble sometimes, like last week. On Tuesday, I wrote that
Donald Trump "deserves at least some space to pass
specifically bad policies." That was intended as both
facetious and charitable—that is, we need to give a
new sitting president some time to warm up to the job, and
that he will inevitably make bad decisions. Before the sun
dawned on Friday, Trump had issued a number of executive
orders that, to put it mildly, deserved less "space" and
more criticism.
I'll spare you the articles that criticized this
executive order or that—of which there were thousands. In that cacophony, I looked for someone who isn't a
Trump hater or a Trump defender, and who could step back and look at the forest instead of the trees. A Rod Dreher blog, in which he pulls in commentary from David Brooks and Eliot Cohen, proved to
fit the bill.
CT, of course, weighed in. My offering, for what it's worth, was more about how we might respond to
one executive order if we took the advice of King David. We also published an intriguing news report from our
correspondent in Cairo on "What Arab Leaders Think of Trump Prioritizing Persecuted
Christian Refugees."
Does the Media Make Us Afraid of Terrorists?
In another post, I lamented the sad state of contemporary
journalism, only to have a journalist I respect write to say:
As a journalist for 45 years, the journalists I have known, and know, are honest professionals, not given to letting partisan opinions color or "dominate" their reporting. Nor do they conspire to "slant" their reporting. Such actions belong to other publications promoting a specific political line or philosophy.
My
sweeping critique suggests that I too am subject to
the wiles of celebrity journalists, who in my experience
often conflate opinion with reporting. But while they get a
lot of attention, real journalists continue their unsung
work with dedication, in papers small and large. HT to
journalist William Schuster.
That being said, even good journalists do things, often
inadvertently, that makes it harder for us to grasp reality. This analysis in Priceonomics
marshals research to argue—persuasively, it seems to me—that the "media
fuels
our fear of terrorism." In my view, this has less to do
with bias than it has to do with "giving readers what they
want" and fishing for those elusive page views and
subscriptions. I know of where I speak, since we're tempted by this
every day at CT.
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On to Happier Topics…
… like learning to read fast and well. Apparently, speed-reading tips are not all that helpful.
… like what Americans think that God thinks of the Super Bowl and devout athletes. … like spiritual "immigration" and existential "refugees," and the grace that covers us all. The same judgment in which God accuses and condemns us as sinners and gives us up to death, he pardons us and places us in a new life before him and with him. —Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV I page 516. | ||
Grace and peace,
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