Is It Any Wonder Why We Are Media Exhausted?

[HKHaugan]

Is It Any Wonder Why We’re Media Exhausted?

Having finished a front-page Associated Press article in the local paper headlined “Trump lags predecessors on diversity” subtitled “Cabinet picks mostly wealthy, white, male, business-minded,” my initial response was ‘Here we go again.  Give me a break.’  It was written by two reporters, Lisa Lerer and Julie Pace.  My personal objection is based on the article’s superficiality revealing the bias and bigotry of the writers; categorizing human beings in terms of their external appearance, gender, economic and professional position (4 externals). 

Could it just be that the Cabinet picks are because they are business people with worldwide contacts and their ability to make deals?  No, No!  It’s ulterior motivation.  Keep the divisive fires blazing.  Keep picking the external categories aflame because we the media are the perfect analysts.  We know how to keep conflict alive.  Keep people looking at each other as enemies.  That’s our job.  If anyone disagrees with us they’re stupid.  After all we are the perfect ones.  Fuel hostility between races, genders, rich and poor, the employer and employee.  We all know external differences make us enemies (keep skin color the way you identify the enemy), gender (create distrust between male and female), wealth (all wealthy people are evil), business-minded (anyone in big business is untrustworthy).  All others are the good who are being victimized by the evil ones.  

Especially good are the reporters whose biases are pure and above reproach.  I know not all media people are bad guys but so much of the reportage is done in this manner.  You see it on TV constantly.  Prime time programs are injected with the so-called ‘victimized’ given special roles even when they have nothing to do with the basic theme of the program. There is so much social engineering based on divisiveness filling the airways that even the cast of the Broadway show Hamilton flaunted their own form of bigotry before the Vice President-elect. 

The celebration of diversity is really the elevation of divisiveness.  The more we ‘celebrate’ our differences the more fragmented we become.  Multiculturalism and political correctness have made us all the real victims by their perpetrators.  The major TV networks and the printed media know hostility, conflict and divisiveness make money.

As disciples of Jesus our worldview is totally different.  Everyone is an image of God (Gen.1:26).  That makes everyone a human being, each with equal dignity and, as our Biblically influenced Declaration of Independence tells us, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Our Constitution and its developing legal system are the world’s leaders in recognizing and maintaining that human dignity.  But the media continue to keep us in a contentious mode excusing themselves from being the victimizers.