Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 May 2005 14:06:21
Sorry to keep harping on about this - but I have to do a youth group talk tomorrow night on Christians and journalism. The youth in question are rather like I was at that age and tend to see things in black and white. Journalism is firmly on the "black" side of the equation.
So what to do? Apart from sit back and hope that I don't get pelted with rotten tomatoes? I thought maybe I'd mention the concept of the press being the Fourth Estate - the final place you can go for justice when all else fails. I thought I might also mention the fact that the corruption endemic in a nation is inversely linked to the freedom of the press.
To add to that? Well, I'm expecting a lot of questions about Jerry Springer, and I thought I might get them to try and convince me that the things they think are important should be on the front page of a newspaper (ha ha, revenge - get them to see what I have to go through every day). One of those things I thought i might ask them to make a case for is the Make Poverty History Campaign (partly inspired by Dave's blog - can't do links sorry). I don't wear a MPH band, partly because I don't feel I understand the campaign enough to explain it to the whizzy economists here.
It will be different anyway, and if i can't convince them that journalism is not "of the devil" then i don't feel i'll be doing my job properly. As one other Christian hack said to me once, "everyone at church thinks I'm shocking, and everyone at work thinks I'm just odd." It's a thin tightrope to tread sometimes, but I wouldn't exchange it for anything.