What I Learned in Journalism School

I graduated from college back in the dark ages of the 1970s, when you would think most subjects were relatively harmless, and most teaching was still truth-based.

Not so – but I realized how deceived I’d been only recently.

First, there was history: I spent almost all my electives on this subject, particularly modern American, German and Russian history. And except for a German history class taught by a very tough refugee from someplace like Munich, I earned mostly As and Bs. (The German gave me a C – my only sub-B at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Nevertheless, since he’d said up front that to earn a C, you had to demonstrate a mastery of the material, I was pretty proud of that grade.)

But I was shocked to learn recently, in reading a firsthand account by a very trustworthy woman in my church, that the Soviets were busy invading southeastern countries like Romania in the early days of World War II. They had not, as I’d been taught, waited patiently for Allied permission to “rescue” eastern Europe after the war. Somehow my professors failed to mention this little matter of early invasion, just as they hadn’t bothered to teach us that Stalin’s bloodbaths extended far beyond his own political enemies. Nor did they ever mention that Mao was anything but a great guy – but then, I suppose Chinese history wasn’t their specialty.

Perhaps even worse, because it has impacted every generation of Americans since, were our journalism studies. This was in the heyday of Watergate, so you’d expect that we were well-taught in the art and science of objective investigative reporting, wouldn’t you?

But no. I was amazed to come across some of my old college papers and exams not long ago, and to see that my journalism training had shoved me firmly away from my Christian upbringing and towards agnosticism and finally atheism.

For instance, these fading papers and exams demonstrated how we J-school students venerated the “scientific method.” What’s more, I apparently thought it called for rejection of Authority – and yes, I spelled it Authority with a capital A, perhaps subconsciously rejecting the Creator Himself.

Another example: We were taught that reality is the product of the observed PLUS the observer, and that there is no reality or truth apart from this combination – in short, no objective, absolute truth. Reality is all shaped by our unique perspective, we were assured, and anyone who claims to know absolute truth is a buffoon or a liar (not that there is anything wrong with being a liar, mind you, unless you are claiming to know a little something about truth).

And another example: We J-school students studied General Semantics. I found an all-too-familiar definition of this field on Wikipedia: It’s “a form of mental hygiene that enables practitioners to avoid ideational traps built into natural language and 'common sense' assumptions, thereby enabling practitioners to think more clearly and effectively.”

My main takeaway from General Semantics was that we should reject labeling people. We should never say “I am a liar” or “he is a thief.” Instead, we should only describe a specific event, if we really must: “I am a person who lied when confronted by capitalist pigs,” or “he is a person who stole because his family was starving.”

In other words, anyone who would use biblical terms to describe a person would be thinking very fuzzily! Which meant we should NEVER repeat a passage such as Revelation 21:8, which says, “But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

Perhaps this explains in part why it would’ve been quite impossible for a go-with-the-flow UWM journalism student in the ‘70s to embrace the Bible, even if he or she could be bothered to read it. It contradicted all we were learning!

Instead, we embraced all these cool General Semantics ideas such as “the Ploggly Theory,” created by a professor of speech pathology. (Don’t ask me why something developed by a speech pathology professor was part of the journalism curriculum. I haven’t a clue.)

The Ploggly Theory is a cute name for some eternally fatal thinking, because it says that anything we can’t see is a Ploggly – a figment of our imaginations. And that includes everything from fairies, demons and devils to, of course, gods. Plogglies were a contemptuous dismissal of Christianity and the Bible, which tells us in 2 Corinthians 4 that the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

There you have it – yet another example of our tax dollars at work, educating the very people charged with making sense of the world around us. And Plogglies are still out there on the internet, being presented by smug intellectuals as proofs against what one person called “that giant Spook in the sky”!

All these General Semantics concepts were presented in high-falootin’ abstract language. It fooled me into thinking this field oh-so-intellectual and smart compared with ”prescientific” teachings like “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” I would say it’s all just silly blather, but that wouldn’t be true – because it was definitely Satanically designed to change our worldviews from what’s now scornfully called the “Judeo-Christian ethic” to an entirely relativistic worldview.

And here we are, nearly 40 years later, a culture tolerant of all viewpoints but one, with a citizenry incapable of even imagining absolute truth, let alone tolerating anyone who proclaims it.

On Critters and the Creator

A girlfriend emailed me this little essay this morning:

THE BUZZARD: If you put a buzzard in a pen that is 6 feet by 8 feet and Is entirely open at the top, the bird, in spite of its ability to fly, will be an absolute prisoner. The reason is that a buzzard always begins a flight from the ground with a run of 10 to 12 feet. Without space to run, as is its habit, it will not even attempt to fly, but will remain a prisoner or life in a small jail with no top.

THE BAT: The ordinary bat that flies around at night, a remarkable nimble creature in the air, cannot take off from a level place. If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and, no doubt, painfully, until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then, at once, it takes off like a flash.

THE BUMBLEBEE: A bumblebee, if dropped into an open tumbler, will be there until it dies, unless it is taken out. It never sees the means of escape at the top, but persists in trying to find some way out through the sides near the bottom. It will seek a way where none exists, until it completely destroys itself.

PEOPLE: In many ways, we are like the buzzard, the bat, and the bumblebee. We struggle about with all our problems and frustrations, never realizing that all we have to do is look up! That's the answer, the escape route and the solution to any problem! Just look up.

Our Creator has given us so many clues in creation about our relationship with Him. I’m not sure how well the BUZZARD and the BAT fit the writer’s particular PEOPLE conclusion. Seems like the BUZZARD and the BAT wouldn’t gain anything by looking up. But maybe there’s a different message with them. The BAT, for instance, may hint that we must suffer a fall in self-esteem before we can approach His throne as He commands, in humility.

But assuming that it could fly upwards in such confinement, the BUMBLE BEE may fit the “look up” advice perfectly – and may be a beautiful reflection of Proverbs 3:5-6:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct your paths.

In our pet-full household, I think often of cats and dogs and their relationships with us as metaphors for our relationships with God.

Mindy our Persian has nothing to do with us unless she is hungry. She would be happiest if we left her totally alone, which is a real problem with a cat with a cottony coat; we have to comb her and cut out the mats for her own good, in spite of the fact that it is torture for her to be held and touched. She considers herself supremely independent, and us, food dispensers at best.

When she is awake, Lucy the Basset has separation anxiety even if we simply close a door on her. A real surprise, considering how she ignores our commands when anything more interesting is going on around her.

Sir Wally the Oriental Shorthair follows us around, sleeps on us, sleeps on my desk all day long, and comes running when we call him. He talks to us constantly. He has no use for the other pets, except he seems to like Shad the yellow lab. Shad is very similar to Wally, in that he sticks close to us and obeys us even when he’d rather not. Shadow's only flaw is his fear of nail trims, fallout from a traumatic trim a few years ago, but of course we have no choice – he just can’t bring himself to trust us to be doing what’s best for him.

I think the lesson is that God wants us to be like Wally and Shadow – always with our hearts turned towards Him, responsive, obedient, and wanting to be near Him more than anything in the world.

I don’t know anyone else’s heart, but I’d guess that most authentic Christians are probably more like Lucy, wanting to be close to Him but wandering far away during the course of most days; perhaps that’s why He set aside Sunday as a day for us to concentrate on our relationship with Him.

And I’ll bet that most cultural or cafeteria Christians (those who pick what they like out of what little they know about God, and ignore the rest) are more like Mindy -- turning to Him only when they have an immediate earthly need for Him, and otherwise thinking of Him as someone entirely different from who He really is.