A couple of years ago the media coverage of a few shark attacks made it seem that the waters were churning with killers on a rampage. Millions fled the beaches out of fear and a great many have not yet returned. What really happened is that there were fewer newsworthy stories that summer than normal. The shark attacks caught the public’s interest, so the media rode this story for as long as they could, dramatizing every attack more than what normally would have been covered. The perception that was the result of the magnified coverage was that shark attacks had suddenly increased when actually there were fewer that year than normal.

Summer is usually very slow for news. This year the media feeding frenzy is blowing some usually un-newsworthy political issues out of proportion simply because there is not much else to talk about. The discerning understands this and knows this happens nearly every summer, or anytime news get slow. Few understand the long-term devastation that such irresponsible coverage can bring. Some people are still afraid to go to the beach because of the exaggerated coverage of the shark attacks. Many of those who have returned confess that sharks are in their minds almost the entire time they are in the water, and they just don’t have as much fun as they used to.

Some people have likewise had their trust in some of our government leaders similarly affected by over-coverage of some issues lately.

However, this kind of over-coverage or exaggeration of the news can also have positive effects. In 1945, Winston Churchill was voted out of office by the British who seemed to understand that their great wartime leader would not make a very good peacetime leader. He really did not understand economics very well, and since the war was over, their great problems were economic. Even so, many still considered Churchill to be “the first citizen of the world,” as President Harry Truman called him. His words still carried great weight, and it was after he left office as Prime Minister that he probably made his greatest contributions to the future of the free world.

Churchill had prophetically forewarned the world about Hitler very early in the Nazi rise to power. He had proven to be an accurate political prophet, and so continued to have a large media contingent that evaluated every word he spoke publicly. When he came to America to give his now famous “Iron Curtain” speech at the little Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, almost everyone missed the implications of what he had said—except the media. After several days of carefully examining this speech, they understood that he was warning the world about communism the way he had warned about Nazism. He was also challenging America to lead in the necessary confrontation with communism. At the time this was something that America was very reticent to do.

Even after World War II, isolationism was the dominant force in American foreign policy. Isolationism was basically the determination to stay out of any international affairs or problems that did not directly affect American interests. This determination was so strong that we suffered remarkable humiliations in both World War I and II, but still refused to get involved until we were directly attacked. America loved Sir Winston, but it was far from ready to embrace such an implied responsibility that Churchill gave in his speech to encourage American leadership of the free world.

Not long after Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, on March 12, 1947, President Truman uttered just three sentences in a speech that radically changed the foreign policy that had dominated America for a century and a half. In three sentences he set the course for American foreign policy that more than a half century later continues to be our guiding principle. This became known as “The Truman Doctrine,” which was basically a commitment for the proactive American leadership in world affairs.

The Truman Doctrine was the foundation for American confrontation of Soviet expansionism, and helped to steer America to its ultimate victory in the Cold War. The Truman Doctrine also made it possible for The Marshall Plan (that was really Truman’s plan), to use American resources to rebuild war torn Western Europe, almost certainly saving these nations from falling into the Communist camp. What does this have to do with the media?

When Truman gave his speech with these three sentences that so radically changed American foreign policy, Congress basically slept through it. Even the State Department seemed to have missed his point. Neither did the public catch the implications of what had been said. It was again the media, who examined and re-examined every word of the speech, carefully thinking through the implications of every sentence, that gave both illumination and justification to this dramatic shift in a nation’s whole world view.

One point that I am trying to make is that presidential speeches are extremely important, and every word can carry tremendous weight. For this reason, it is understandable that both the media and the Congress are concerned about the quality of information that makes its way into a presidential speech, as has become an issue this summer. Even though the firestorm seems to be blown far out of proportion like the shark attacks, and to a degree it has, we should all learn the lesson to be careful with our words. As Solomon put it in Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...”

However, this does not mean that every issue the media jumps on has merit. In fact, when there are few other stories, we can just about count on what is being covered to be exaggerated, at least on the level of importance that is attributed to them. Should the Lacy Peterson case, as tragic as it is, receive the kind of media attention that it has? What about the dozens, and possibly even hundreds of minority children that have been lost during the time that so much attention has been given to the Peterson case? Why is her case so important and the others do not even receive a footnote in the media? There is a natural exaggeration and distortion in media coverage that we must understand if we are going to discern the truth.

Overall, far less than one percent of the events of the day are extreme enough to make the news. The overwhelming majority of real life is not going to be on the news, but it is “real life,” or the “normal life” that the overwhelming majority of us experience every day. There is a sense that the news happening in the world is but a very tiny sliver of what is really happening. This is not the fault of the media—it is simply the way it is, and we must understand this if we are going to discern truth.

No one is going to buy newspapers filled with stories of happy families having picnics in the park or doing other things that contain the essence of almost everyone else on the planet. Only extremes are going to make the news, be written about, or talked about. The real problem that this creates is the tendency for us to judge others by their most extreme elements. This is one of the enemy’s major tools of deception.

One of the titles given to Satan is Beelzebub, which means, “lord of the flies.” In prophetic dreams and visions, flies usually represent lies. This is why Satan is also called “the father of lies” (John 8:44). Flies are some of the filthiest creatures whose preferred diet is dung. Because of this, flies carry a lot of disease. For this reason the Lord commanded Israel in the wilderness to bury their waste outside of the camp far away from other people. This is one lesson that we desperately need to learn as well. As we are told in Philippians 4:8:

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any
excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things.

This does not mean we stick our heads in the sand and refuse to see anything bad. In fact, we are also commissioned to address and confront the evil and darkness of our times. The key word in the Scripture above is what we “dwell on.” If we are going to know the truth, love the truth, and walk in truth, we must have a different perspective than is common in the world.

As Paul also wrote in Philippians 1:9, “And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment.” As this verse states, “real knowledge, and “all discernment” is based on love. Anything but love will distort what we are seeing. Those who are of opposing parties or interests will therefore tend to attribute the most sinister motives to actions or words that will not be true.

This is why whenever someone comes to me with accusations or criticism about their government, their church, their job, or another person, I always ask them if their feelings are the result of love for these, or did they originate somewhere else. As naive as this will tend to seem to a critical person, who is in fact a most deceived person, anything but love will distort our discernment. Even though the popular saying is “love is blind,” love is actually the basis of true discerning vision.

As I shared in previous Special Bulletins, I never believed all the propaganda that our government was using to justify the war against Iraq, and thought that it was hurting our credibility then. However, as I also said then, this did not mean that the war was not justified. It seemed obvious that the justifications were so abundant that it was not necessary to use propaganda, or try to link Saddam to terrorists groups that he was actually an enemy with.

Even so, the fact that the media is blowing up the statement that was in the President’s speech about Saddam seeking nuclear materials from Niger is more of a sign that we are in the slow news months of summer. The fact that the Democratic presidential candidates are making such a big deal out of this is likewise a sign that they are shockingly low on merit for their own candidacies, as well as real ammunition to use against the President. Both are starting to look more and more ridiculous.

That this statement was made in the State of the Union Address was a mistake. The White House has admitted it, and the CIA Director has admitted he made a mistake in not protesting it (or even reading the speech before it was made). But the fact that this continues to be a deal at all is really the result of not having much other news to cover, and the opposing candidates must not have anything of real substance to make an issue of at this time.

I am not writing this to share a political view as much as a pastoral view. We must learn to use discernment in what the media covers regardless of whether it has to do with where we go on vacation or for whom we vote. The level of importance assigned to issues by the media, or the political party that has an agenda, is rarely going to be based on truth and accuracy. As the Lord said in John 7:24, "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."

This is not a perfect world and no one is going to be able to do a perfect job of leadership in it. Unrighteous judgment can make the job much harder than it needs to be. We are in a war, and a very dangerous one that is still far from being won. Our freedom is in crisis. It is not yet determined who will win this war. We should be concerned that politicians and the media are crossing a line that should never be crossed in such times that we are in. This can embolden our enemies in such a way that is likely to not only cost us more of the lives of our soldiers in Iraq, but could lead to far more devastating tragedies in the future as well.

This is not at all to imply that we do not need to hold our leaders to high standards or confront their mistakes. It is how we do this that is important. We can challenge mistakes in statements without speculating about their motives.

Compassion for the CIA
This may be a shocking statement to some, but I confess to feeling sorry for the CIA. They do one of the most difficult, dirtiest, but heroic jobs in the world. Agents often spend their lives in constant danger, while receiving incredibly low pay, and seldom get any recognition unless they make a mistake. They can save the country from many terrible and devastating attacks, but let just one get past them and their heads will roll! The CIA has been hamstrung by budget cuts, had its character so attacked that it becomes nearly impossible to attract quality recruits, and then they get blamed for not doing a perfect job. Every dollar spent on the CIA and the FBI could save many dollars in the defense and homeland security budgets, not to mention many lives.

I appreciate the Director of the CIA for confessing that he dropped the ball in letting something into the President’s speech that did not merit inclusion. I also appreciate the President for not firing him for it. On the contrary, he expressed confidence in a man who has done a very good job in a very hard place—but not a perfect one. That is going to happen regardless of whom we put in there.

Even so, ultimately the President does have to take responsibility for what he said in his speech and a straightforward apology for it would probably win him more trust and approval instead of eroding it as his personal silence seems to be doing. It is easy to understand how the White House would think this issue is too petty to be concerned about. But because it has been blown out of proportion, it may not go away fully until the President takes the responsibility Americans expect from their President, and deserve.

Neither the war nor the peace have been managed perfectly, and neither could they have been. This is not a perfect world and especially in matters as complicated as these are, we are foolish to expect perfection. Even so, both the war and the peace have been managed brilliantly. Most of us expected the casualties to be far higher during the war. But we should have expected to lose far more than we have as the country is being secured. Of course, we hope not to lose any, but that is not realistic in such a situation.

It was not unthinkable that we would be losing a dozen soldiers a day during this phase of the occupation of Iraq. We were losing many more in Vietnam in a situation not nearly as complicated. It is understandable that we do not want another Vietnam, but whether this becomes another Vietnam is not just about the number of casualties. As tragic as every casualty is, there are causes that are worth the casualties.

The situation in Iraq and other rogue countries, which we are likely to have to confront, could get to the point where far more are being lost than in Vietnam. Even so, it will still be something that has to be done. We are in a war and it is far from over. It is going to take sacrifice and endurance to win. Losing is not an option. The consequences of not persevering are unthinkable. One of the primary reasons that we suffer terrorism in the first place is the perception that we cannot endure casualties, and if they inflict enough we will turn tail and run. It is imperative that this perception is changed or we can count on the attacks continuing.

I for one am very thankful for the courage and resolve of our leadership. We are foolish to expect anyone to do everything perfectly in this world, much less in the confusing times that we are now in. But I cannot imagine them being done much better than they have, and I pray daily for the grace to continue. Not many can live under the kind of stress that our leaders have been under for this long. They desperately need our prayers.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with
thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your
hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there
is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice
these things, and the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:6-9).

For thus the LORD spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to
walk in the way of this people, saying,

"You are not to say, "It is a conspiracy!' In regard to all that this people call a
conspiracy,

And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it. "It is the LORD of hosts
whom you should regard as holy. And He shall be your fear, and He shall be your
dread.

"Then He shall become a sanctuary…” (Isaiah 8:11-14)