Most baby boomers born today grew up with three major television news outlets, ABC, NBC and CBS. Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley and other “respected” news professionals delivered content that had been refined down to the “best of” the day. Everybody had a local newspaper and there were a handful of major national newspapers such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. News was information was shifted, input, digested, regurgitated and repackaged before most people even knew what had happened.
Today’s world is much more democratic and for the better. People are allowed to contribute their opinions, news, commentary and supporting video and audio to events big and small. This has made it possible for some important events that would have never made it through the filter of news years ago to make it into main-stream consciousness. This year’s revolt in Iran that was covered by folks in Iran on twitter is a great example of how it can be helpful to have technology available to democratize news and information.
Clearly, it’s also had some troubling side affects as well and created a lot of clutter that has made it very difficult to determine what is actually ‘the truth’.
That’s why I think DISCERNMENT is the key skill that needs to be developed and used in our current media culture. We need to challenge ourselves and the next generation to be able to use wisdom and intelligence to know when, what and how to filter- because no one is filtering our information anymore.
So how do you have DISCERNMENT?
1. Pray for Wisdom. In this world you need a perspective bigger than your own. What’s eternal? What’s been true over the course of history? What stands the test of time? How does this line up with my values? The scripture says if you pray for Wisdom you will receive it. If you are praying for wisdom you’ll be thinking about what is wise and using better judgement as well.
2. Judgement. Judgement is not being judgemental, it’s simply knowing that you must make a decision about what to believe and how to act. You CAN’T believe everything you hear- no matter what emotional buttons it pushes in you. I’m afraid we are running the risk of becoming accustomed to immediate information and immediate responses to it. You’ve got to pause for a moment and QUESTION whether there is more to the story.
3. Input Multiple Points of View. The news of old wasn’t objective, you had a handful of people who held a similar world view digesting information for a diverse group of people. But you creating your own narrow band of biased information is not much better. Listening to only conservative, only liberal, only ANYTHING creates an unbalanced perspective and is frankly lazy. We need to hear multiple viewpoints, use judgement based on the whole of the information. Will your viewpoint be challenged? Yes. Does it need to be challenged? Of course it does.
4. Take your time to settle on a decision. If you hear a news story and immediately go into a head spin, maybe that’s a first clue that you’re not taking the time to let it settle on us and to think through all the information. Few of us have to respond to the news of the day immediately, so you can take the time to be thoughtful about your responses.
