Jeremiah Wright, New Media, and Our Public Discourse

Continuing, on my personal blog, to analyze some of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s public communiques from the standpoint of one Christian pastor, I found myself, as I wrote the third installment last evening, considering the super-heated discussions we have as the result of new media:

For now at least, the mainstream media and the blogging world have, for the most part, left the Jeremiah Wright controversy behind. That’s too bad in a way and it showcases the problem with what has become not a twenty-four hour news cycle, but a constant assault of headlines, sound bites, video clips, and rapid fire stereotyping often devoid of context or real analysis.

Before 1980, when TV network news was established as part of a pantheon of journalistic outlets, joining newspapers and radio, supplanting the latter and in some ways, supplementing the former, there was time to develop stories responsibly, covering multiple aspects. There was even a place for a dispassionate analyst to give nightly commentary, as was true of Eric Sevareid five nights a week on CBS News, his wise words treated almost like wisdom from Mount Sinai.

I’m grateful for the Internet. It allows for an increased public dialog and has made it possible for even someone like me, a preacher in a small Ohio town, to reach an audience I could not have otherwise reached. (And every writer wants people to read what they have written, no matter what other motives they may have.)

But the Internet of today is a bit like the media landscape of Europe in the 1500s, after Gutenberg’s presses had started to make their presence and potential apparent, or of the young united colonies, then United States, immediately before and after the Revolution. In both contexts, pamphleteering, those eras’ equivalents of blogs and YouTube videos, became major sources of information and ideas.

In the case of early-16th.-century Europe, the printing press and the wide distribution of his essays made Martin Luther, the Reformer of whose movement I am a part today, the very first media superstar, as others have pointed out. (That was also an era when copyright laws and royalties did not exist, proof that Luther cared not a fig about wealth, but simply wanted people to know that we are made right with God not by what we do, but by who we know.)

The Internet is a wild and woolly world. The conventional media, which includes the cable TV networks, feel a need to respond to and carry items making the news on the web in order to keep up.

But at times, this causes all of the media players–conventional and otherwise–to express opinions and pass judgments before facts have been established…

The Internet gives us access to all sorts of information and ideas. It also gives an unprecedented capacity to put in our own two-cents’ worth. But we shouldn’t allow the low cost of admission to cheapen our discourse…

New media have let old genies out of Western culture’s bottles. In times past, old media was a gatekeeper that suppressed many opinions and much information. Preponderantly, that was a bad thing, something which old Sevareid himself lamented. (I found a 1989 CSpan interview with Sevareid, an excerpt from which appeared on this past Sunday’s edition of Q and A, fascinating.)

But there were positives, too. Kooky ideas or scurrilous personal attacks on public figures that one may have heard at the water cooler or at informal gatherings with friends and family weren’t turned into blog posts, YouTube videos, or headlines on CNN.

New media give us all new freedoms we haven’t enjoyed since the advent of mass culture. We can talk back and have a part in national and international discussions. As a Christian who considers the Bible’s account of the Garden of Eden, I note that we human beings have, in fact, always had awesome freedom for independent decision-making and for forming our own opinions and ideas. But never has this freedom been matched by such an extraordinary capacity to affect others. That’s an awesome thing. But it’s also Kryptonite and, because what happens on the Internet can have immediate and significant consequences, should, I think, be handled with care.

Just a few thoughts.

[The posts of the Is Wright Wrong? series as it's appeared so far can be found here, here, and here.]