This talk was first given at the Christians in the Media Access All Areas Conference, August 26th, 2005

The title of this talk is a classic. It is not mine; it was given to me by the organisers; it assumes what it is meant to demonstrate; I do not like it in any case; it suggests that there is a media conspiracy and that I am going to attack the media; it seems to be based on the idea that there is one thing called "the media'; in short, in typical media style it gives us a headline which attracts, but which may not have much to do with the substance of what follows, and it sets me up. Otherwise it is good.

That said, what am I going to do? It is obvious: redefine the topic to suit me and ignore the organisers. Well, not quite. I am going to try to address what I think they were getting at, which is as follows. Let's look at the words "secret' and "agenda'.

It seems to many of us that in matters to do with faith, there is evidence of a consistently distorted media line.

If so, it is a secret because most people in the media are unaware of it themselves " that is it is not a secret conspiracy, but a largely unconscious element of behaviour. 

It is an agenda because it is consistent, it tells the same story.

To examine these matters may help you be aware of them, and correct the balance, always in favour of truth and fairness.

To begin, however, let's set this discussion its proper context.

God and his chosen media

Christianity is a book religion; it relies on language, on words. Think about how God reveals himself. It is true that he reveals himself in the created world around us, in its beauty, in its power, in its complexity of design. But if that were the whole revelation of God we would be in trouble, for two reasons.

First, because it is insufficient. God has created us to be relational creatures. We yearn for union with each other; to remain distinct and yet to be united in doing things, in seeing things; to be united by friendship, affection and love. Integral to such unity is the word " words of truth, of affection, of promise, of correction, of invitation, of admiration, of encouragement. It is a great affliction to be blind; it is as great an affliction, or perhaps worse, to be deaf.
 
When God reveals himself to us it is not merely a matter of him telling us things about himself. For that, nature may have been sufficient. He wants to speak to us in order to establish a fitting relationship with him, a friendship in which he is the senior partner. It is no accident that the Son of God is called the Word of God; his logos. Unexpressed logos is reason; expressed it becomes speech. God is a speaking God and he designed words to be the means of communication between persons.

Second, because our reception of revelation in nature is distorted. There is nothing wrong with the revelation itself. God is a great communicator, a perfect one. The problem is with us. When Adam sinned on our behalf he put himself and his family outside the Garden, where God spoke to him face to face. In the world outside the garden, free, so he dreamed, from the authority of the word of God, he became enslaved three times over: to his own fallen nature, to cosmic evil and to human communal wrong. He and his successors rejoice in a spurious freedom, a freedom marked by an unspoken addictiveness.

The great biblical story of the Tower of Babel is a constant reminder to us about human speech. Humans love fellowship; we love society; outside the garden this love, like so much else is distorted. The men of the Tower of Babel unite in a false unity in order to assault God's authority yet again. God punishes them by confusing their languages, causing an even greater experience of human alienation not only from him but from one another.  The cultural divisions of humankind over which there is so much misunderstanding and hatred and blood, arise from our alienation for thew very centre of our being. We were designed to be united to God in love; we spurned him and we now pay the penalty in our disengagement from each other, and from the world in which God has set us.

We cannot hear his message in this world, Instead we habitually take parts of the world and worship them. Our idolatry is a testimony to the need we have to be united with God and yet our alienation from him We would rather be in charge of our gods instead of submitting to the true God. Ironically, of course, we are in fact dominated by the gods we choose for ourselves. You only have to see the addictive, and spiritually crippling, power of money and of shopping.

God still speaks. Words are his chosen means of relating to us. He renews his words through his prophets. In the end, he sends his Son, his Word, to speak with us and he speaks words full of grace and truth.  True and gracious words create trust, and trust is the very essence of relationship. You cannot really love a person unless you can trust them. Love, the unity which does not swallow you up, is the fruit of faith. The speech of God is characterised by promises. Promises control that great unknown, the future; they make it known; they make it stable; they remove our anxieties. We believe his promises and so enter into a relationship with him marked by faith, hope and love. It is a relationship in which once again he is God and we are his servants; in which he has the authority which we contested.

As are God's words, so should our words be. His are pure, true, trustworthy, reliable, inviting, correcting, fearless, enlightening. They are drawn from him by love for the other person. The problem lies in our threefold enslavement to what the Bible calls the world, the flesh and the devil.

In particular, the Bible refers to the evil one as the "Father of lies'; a malign spirit whose business it is to darken our understanding and corrupt our relationships. He presence is marked by slander, malice and falsehood. But that is not all, just as at the Tower of Babel, men united together to assault God's authority, so too now human beings unite against the truth. We often do this unconsciously, by accepting the fashion of the day, by believing corporate falsehood, by sheer laziness as we take what we are told without checking out the facts. From this worldliness comes such evils as racism and prejudice; but so to come the intellectual faults by which we accept an ideology as an excuse for thought. We are victims of the cliché in our dealings with other people and with each other.

Now what do we learn from all this? Four things.

First, words matter immensely. They are integral to the very pattern that God has set up for human existence and especially relationships. They are a delight in themselves and a means of delight.

Second, meaning matters. Words are wonderfully flexible, but are not capable of just any interpretation.  The fact is that God uses human words to establish his relation with us and to encourage us to relate to each other.  Thus although words can be terribly abused, they can also do much good, as coming from an author who means what he says and expects us to understand him and to respond by trusting in his words The whole business of suspecting all words and giving the recipient the box seat as far as their meaning is concerned, is a blatant attempt to deny the priority and power of God's words; that is to deny his authority over our lives.

Third, the abuse of words is a characteristic of our fallen human nature. If you are in the word business, it is a dangerous job. The Bible is very strong on the inability we have to tame the tongue; "it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison'. We can never get this right in a post Babel world but we are to strive for good speech in all things, for the highest standards of speech. Here especially we must love the neighbour.

Fourth, God tells us: "by your word you will be judged'. We are accountable for what we do with his words, and for all our words as well. Do not look to the approval of those around you, but rather for his approval. That will be the final test.

My experience of the alleged, "secret agenda'

Well, that's what matters. Now a few footnotes.

I have always been an interested consumer of "the media', especially the news and commentary elements of it. Like all users, I have my opinion about its quality, and my strong preferences between print, radio, the web and television. I can certainly give you a whole lot of clichés about "the media', many of them unfriendly. But you know all that -  and all sections of society are summed up in clichés: the uncaring banks, the corrupt police, the nasty uranium industry, the venal politicians, the hypocritical churches. What is important is that in the post-babel world is that we have free speech and a free press. (This is both necessary and impossible, but it remains our aim. We sustain free speech in a moral society).

Of course, I am not merely a consumer. Although you may not immediately think of this, the pulpit was a key medium at various stages in history I would say it still is, but in a reduced way.  It was contested at various times by governments wanting to get a message out and preachers wanting to say their piece.  The freedom of the pulpit matters a great deal us all, including unbelievers. Here is the possibility of widespread, local opinions being generated not owned by magnates or governments, if ever we should reach such a stage. What I have said about God the communicator is absolutely crucial for the conduct of Christian communications.

Since becoming Archbishop of Sydney in 2001, I have for the first time in my life had regular contact in a professional way with what you may call the mainstream media. The experience has had its high and low points, but as I observe the way in which these media operate, I do not think that I am either a special victim or a special hero.  The media is doing its job according to its own lights, and in accordance with a number of restrictions which the ordinary person may hardly be aware of. On the other hand, it seems to me that some of these restrictions are self-imposed and unnecessary, and I want to question why they exist. Remember that I am suggesting that in matters to do with faith, there is a consistently distorted media line. 

What do I mean by that, why does it occur, and what can be done to help?

First, there is a consistently distorted media line. One of my most memorable moments was in talking to a very proficient journalist. After finishing the story, she asked whether there was anything I would like to add. I said, "Yes, I would like to add that I love Jesus Christ and that he loves the world' (or words to that effect). She laughed and said "They would never print that Archbishop'.

Now that is only a story. But it encapsulates a whole range of experiences. If there is a story to do with the churches, it is what we do or fail to do; but it is not about what we believe. Again and again, I have had God and Jesus omitted from what I have said to media;  or not reported, in the case, say of a state funeral. It is as if, since journalists may be uncomfortable with such concepts, they do not exist, and talk about them is not reported. The result is that religion is turned into its social function; that the worth or otherwise of what is said and done is measured by its social impact, or its capacity to give offence and cause conflict. You would think that churches were either political pressure groups or conflicted, failing organisations.

One result has been that Christian spokespersons, knowing that they have no chance of being heard talking about Christianity, adopt self-censorship. They become ever more desperate to at least be part of society (which, by the way, they are and strongly so), and so they themselves omit any reference to God or the bible.

This is what I mean by a distortion of the news. Christian ethics, for example, are not secular ethics. They are come straight out of what God has said and done. To remove them from that source is not merely to distort them: it is to destroy them. At this level, the consequence has been that God-talk has been effectively banished from public discourse; you cannot speak of him, and you cannot show how belief in him is rational, and leads to rational and beneficial social consequences.

Admit it: if you were going to report this address, you would ignore the first part, the God part, entirely, and try desperately to find something conflictual (or, at least, unusual) in the second part. But I am the author, and I regard the first part as the gist of what I want to say with this part as footnote. Surely your job is to make your report interesting enough for the first part to be included, even in a sentence or two. Otherwise, are you really reporting? In any case, why is the God part of no interest? Why are you so sure that ideas and even theological ideas are of no interest to listeners or readers? Would they not expect me to say something about them? 

One result has been that for the many citizens of Australia who actually have a faith (and not just Christianity), the media itself has become a foreign country. It spends vast amounts of time talking about sport, finance, weather, life-style, health, fashion, relationships, astrology; it even talks about religion from time to time " perhaps increasingly " but it does not talk about religion in a way which is recognisable or sympathetic to the ordinary Christian practitioner. There are hundreds of thousands of Australians " perhaps more - who cannot find the central fact of their lives dealt with in a recognisable or sympathetic form in the media. At best, when we talk God and Spirit and Jesus, the media talks politics and social impact. I wonder in purely commercial terms whether media can afford to continue this practice.

The difficulty is exacerbated when religion in the media falls exclusively into the hands of Christians of liberal persuasion. That liberal Christians have an honoured role to play in the media, I have no doubt. But it must be remembered that liberal Christianity has its own way of viewing the world and this often includes a very unsympathetic account of both so-called conservative Protestant and Roman Catholics, not to mention Pentecostals. Once again, it is frequently hard for readers and listeners to recognise themselves or to have their point of view honoured, although in terms of size, they are far more numerous than the liberal Christians. And from the point of view of history and bible they are closer to what most Christians have always believed and continue to believe.

Let me add a very important rider to what I have just said. I believe that if there is a consistent distortion it is by no mean universal and it seems to be improving. If I may speak personally, I continue to have had a significant number of strongly positive experiences with secular media where I have felt without doubt that I was able to say what I wanted to say, and in my own terms. I was not always comfortable; the results may not have been pretty; people may not have felt that they liked what I had to say or was forced to say by a good journalist asking awkward questions; but I had no doubt at all that I given a fair go within the constraints of that media.

It seems to me that the instinctive media unwillingness to allow us to speak about God and spiritual matters is lifting, and some of the very senior journalists are leading the way in this. I am also delighted to have been asked to give the Boyer lectures this year, and intend to speak about Jesus. But that I have been asked should not surprise us; theology too has its place in the national discussion table. The so-called separation of church and state in no way precludes that, and never has.

Why? The situation is complex and involves among other things, technical issues on which you will know far more than I do. Thus,  even as a sheer amateur I can see that journalism and media work is not easy. To state the obvious, limitations of space and time make the work fiendishly difficult. It is all very well for me to want to be reported in a balanced way, but media has obligations to be both interesting and brisk; it is not always possible to put everything in. Another point I have noticed is that the final story in newsprint does not actually "belong' to anyone; I know that the journalist's name may well be attached, but someone else has put in the all-important headline and that is the story. It is as if a story has its own life. As well, the source of the story may not be very adept at putting over their point of view, and so may be aggrieved at the media rather than self-critical.

The result is, of course, that many people are dissatisfied with the media. The sense that your special interest is especially being picked on is pervasive. In talking to a senior military officer, I became aware that the armed forces are not always happy with the treatment they receive: the stories always seem to be about defective weapons, or costs, or soldiers misbehaving. No doubt this is not true; but it is true enough. I suppose that everyone else from freemasons, to builders, to doctors, to undertakers, to teachers have their media stories and their sense that there is a systematic distortion of their realities. 

I agree, but that does not help much with the problems faced by religion. Insofar as the distortion is a reality, it does actual damage to institutions and breaks down community where it should exist. I could detail actual harm done by persistent media distortion as you would expect from the fact that we need to rely on each other and that truth is integral to that trust. God calls us to the highest standards of probity; we ourselves are not able to sustain them because we have rejected his authority. That's life in this world.

That said, here are some further observations about how things actually work, and how it feels to be media subject. I have noticed the following difficulties.

First, ignorance. Especially when dealing with generalists, it is too much to expect a close knowledge of the subject which has arisen. But sometimes the sheer ignorance of reporters is a concern; they do not know the first thing about Christianity, about history abut the church or about the issue. Now they are merely doing their job, and their job will involve all sorts of things each day, but it is frustrating to have to explain the basics so that the story can even begin to be told.

The case is usually otherwise with specialist religion reporters. Unfortunately I cannot say always; but there are some fine religion reporters around the traps and I think that media is beginning to recognise the importance of this subject once more. If that is so, they cannot afford to deploy people with no first hand experience of their subject. That is an invitation to allow prejudice to swallow objectivity. It certainly has the effect of turning religion into politics, since that will be the journalist's interest. Mind you, religion has its politics and that is fair game also, as long as it is balanced reporting in the broader context of ideas. 

I have noticed this problem however. Owing to the speed with which journalism is conducted, there is a tendency simply to consult the files and to build a story on what the media outlet said last time whether it was accurate or not. I would add to this the deployment of the dreaded cliché. I realise that the journalist has to create a picture in a few words; nuance is not a concept which is easy. And yet, the continual use of adjectives to pigeon-hole " "conservative', "fundamentalist', "liberal', "hard-line', "extremist', "moderate', once-bestowed never retracted " is irritating in the extreme. It is shoddy; lazy even. It makes the task of actually listening to what is said impossible, as you know in advance what the person will say. Furthermore it all goes to build up the cardboard image of a person, often untrue in fact, but an easy target for adverse or positive comment, and an easy foil when a story has to be done at speed. It is hard not to think of the media as having constructed the good guys and the bad guys for ease of reference.

Second,  history.  One of the reasons why religion is not reported on well is the history of religion in our nation. Sectarian controversies, especially between Catholic and Protestant were so fierce and frequently so painful in family life that there grew up a tacit agreement not to talk religion. This extended to the media, and the blame lies with the churches themselves which did not practice speaking the truth in love. A great deal more could be said about this, though not at this time. But it is important to note that here is an important aspect of what has led us to the present unofficial, though not complete, censorship of religious ideas. However, it does give media outlets an excuse to leave well enough alone. They feel instinctively that to try to judge between religious disputes is beyond them; it is better not even to enter into them. But this of course means that talk about God becomes mere "opinion' and cannot be tested in the arena of fact.

Third, secularism. Once again this a complex historical phenomenon. To do it justice in any way would require an examination of such matters as the history of left wing politics, the nature of the social legacy of the 1960s, and the impact of migration and multiculturalism.  Suffice to say " and I am aware of the over simplification " that since the 1960s in particular, there has come to pass a growing assumption that we live is a "secular' society and that by "secular' we mean having no room for God. Hence we cannot talk about him.

Furthermore, this is not just as assumption: for a number of people and not least those who work in the various knowledge industries, this has become a creed: they are missionaries for this position. In their view, to quote a friend of mine who works in the media, "faith is a private thing not to be mentioned in public life. Further, if it does come into public life, it only leads to evangelical fundo-fascism and all the terrorism in the world.' 

Secularism thinks of itself as the new righteousness. It is righteous because it is inclusive of many people, not exclusive like religion; it is righteous because it backed the winning causes of the 1960s, such as abortion reform, censorship repeal and feminism; again, unlike many in the churches; it is righteous because it alone is neutral " you do not have any faith commitments to be a secular person, and therefore you can hold the ring, so to speak, in contemporary Australia; it is righteous because it stands for general values such tolerance and a fair go and mateship, rather than restrictive values such as love and self-sacrifice; it is righteous because it so intellectually superior to any religion. Finally, it is the future, since all these religions, except the new spiritualities, are passing away and we will soon arrive at a christless nirvana. Naturally, I would contest all these opinions.

I would say, with very significant exceptions, that a number of my media experiences are based on secularist assumptions about religion, about me and about the church. It gives the media person the high moral ground and makes it very hard for them to listen to discussion or counter points of view. It leaves them open to the temptation we all experience to replace argument with a sneer. It also makes then susceptible to being used by adversaries with an axe to grind, if that axe is closer to the secularist view which comes so naturally to them.

In the end it self-defeating. By pigeon-holing evangelicals or Catholics or Pentecostals; by using nasty words of them; by sometimes creating hatred against them, they are alienating whole segments of society. More, they are refusing to talk seriously to and of the very people who do so many of the voluntary good works in society.

More, they are making themselves utterly foolish by being so ignorant of the highly significant historical moral and philosophical underpinnings of the positions which they so casually trivialise and trash. You get the impression sometimes that they believe that they are the very first to think of a difficulty in the Christian position. They seem utterly oblivious of the fact that Christians, including some of the greatest minds of east and west, have been thinking on these things for a couple of millennia.

But the matter goes even deeper. It is not as though we are dealing with uneducated media people. Probably they have never been better educated, in a formal sense. But does that education have as strong historical component? Are you aware for example of the extent to which Christianity has impacted our country, and mainly for the good? In Professor Geoffrey Blainey's view, "Christianity in its heyday probably did more for Australia than any other single institution'

Australia may be a secular state under some definitions, but it is not and never has been a secular community. Secularism does not even see what is in the past; it is as if there is an incredible blindness; I do not believe, therefore no one did; and those that did were all hypocrites or fools. 

But within the ambit of modern humanities comes such ideologies as those which promote suspicion of words. "Molest the text before the text molests you' as they say.  Do not trust words; look below the surface; do not allow words to dominate you. As well, the constant suspicion of the real intentions of the speaker, especially power relationships. In the end, these post-modern manoeuvres, only succeed in making relationships impossible; they lock us into anxious little cells in which we can never trust others enough to commit; we are our own sad creatures, alone in all our glory. It is no accident that so much of secularism is anti-marriage, anti-family. It is the age of the individual. 

What can be done? I am not despairing by any means. I think that the Christian churches have been asleep for decades but that there are stirrings. It is no good blaming the media for what amounted to an intellectual capitulation by the churches. Media outlets do not owe us a living.
But the stirrings are not simply a matter of church leaders doing things differently. Christian men and women have to ask for something better from the media. How will they know what we want if we are silent? If we are not happy for Christmas to be dechristianised we need to say so and be vigilant. Likewise, and more importantly, Easter. 

Likewise those who work in the media should not be satisfied with the husks of secularism. Having the secularists in charge of a media outlet is like having the tone deaf in charge of an orchestra; there is so much of life which they do not get, which they cannot see.

It will be important for you to understand the glories of the Christian faith; your Bible, Christian history, Christian teaching. Our churches have failed to educate our lay people, and we can hardly blame others for their ignorance. Give depth to media presentation of religious issues, and give religious depth to the presentation of all issues. I do not mean that we should give Christians an easy time, or let up on the mistakes of the churches. Critical writing is a Christian thing. On the other hand there is no need to be an unwitting accomplice to a secular view of the world.

Go back to the important part of this address, the beginning. Modern society exhibits all the failings that God's word reveals. We are finding language difficult; we are having trouble bonding in a healthy way, we are having trouble finding love; our individualism is killing us. God has created us relational creatures and has given us language as the means of communication. But language is not an absolute; like the media it is a reflection of society itself. It is a reflection of ourselves. In that respect to blame the big bad media is to shoot the messenger.

But there are words we can trust. God has inserted his word into our history. Its form is in the Bible and its centre is his Son, Jesus. He has demonstrated that even human languages can be used as the instruments of loving and fulfilling relationships, with each other and with him. The best thing you can do as a media person is simply to be a Christian person. Use language naturally, truthfully, lovingly as God intends you to use it.

Use the whole range of his language; it permits you and teaches you how to speak of him appropriately, although not constantly; for there are many other persons and issues in your world. God's language frees you not to speak of him all the time.  As you have opportunity, make space for God's word and trust him for it. That will be professional journalism because it reflects the real world and the actual society we live in.

The media's secret agenda? I don't believe that there is such a thing, although we can see for various reasons distortion in the media workplace and some of it is caused by the resolute secularism which is assumed rather than proved to be the only reasonable view to take.