What would better journalism look like?

Every once in awhile I wonder what various industries would look like if they were run according to Christian standards and principles. Recently I found myself wondering about journalism. It's difficult to get quality information on many subjects because you basically get either left-wing or right-wing political propaganda, depending on the news outlet. Sure, I try to keep up with the talking points of both sides, but the irritating thing is the debate stays really shallow, and there isn't a lot of in-depth coverage out there.

What would Christian news look like? It would speak the truth with love. It would also follow the wisdom of Solomon: "The first to present his case seems right until someone comes forward to question him." Both sides would be heard, and both sides would be questioned.

Let's take a hot-button topic, and I'll show you what I mean. Let's talk about the criminal justice system: the concerns over convicting the innocent or acquitting the guilty. The usual stances are: the left accuses the right of being too hard on criminals, being too gung-ho for justice, and risking convicting the innocent -- and, of course, racism. The right accuses the left of being too soft on criminals, being more pro-criminal-rights than pro-victim-rights, and acquitting the guilty.

What could a reporter do?

• Calculate and publish the conviction percentages by judge. Check if there really is a difference in conviction rates between Judge(D) and Judge(R).
  
• Is there a particular judge whose conviction rates are way out of line -- much higher or much lower -- compared to the others in the group? Spend some time in that courtroom and figure out why.
  
• Check and publish mistrial rates.
  
• Check and publish the plea bargain rates, and the typical differences in sentences.
  
• Stay in the courthouse for a week or a month and take a survey after every acquittal. Pay the former defendants $20 each to tell you, anonymously, whether they were really innocent or guilty, to get a handle on the "acquitting the guilty" rate. If you're really feeling bold, ask them if their lawyer knew they were guilty before entering that "not guilty" plea, and ask them what factors enabled them to get away with it.
  
• Check for overturned convictions or known cases of convictions later proved false. Research and write up the factors that led to the miscarriage of justice. If possible, get enough cases that patterns can be detected.
  
• Interview the judges, prosecutors, public defenders, defendants, police, and victims about the different questions that come up during the background research.

Some would take financing; others would just take some good solid research. Ever seen a piece of reporting like that? I haven't. And that has a direct bearing on the quality of the political conversation. Fairly often it's the reporters who set the tone of political discussion in our country. The shallow and one-sided approach is poor stewardship of the public trust and of the public role of a reporter in our society.

Let's take just one more hot-button topic. Let's talk about illegal immigration -- or more specifically, the reporting on illegal immigration. The boilerplate stances are, on the left, that the poor from Mexico deserve a chance at the relative prosperity in America, that immigration enforcement and border security are just a cover for racism, and that the U.S. should provide a path to citizenship for those who enter the country illegally -- or from the right: that millions of illegal aliens are taking jobs that millions of Americans really need and adding a high burden of social service costs, and that the drug war in Mexico is too dangerous to leave our borders as they are. The reporting rarely gets deeper than that. That means it's not really reporting as such, it's more a matter of position papers being put out by the news affiliates of the two main political parties. People looking for real solutions are left without enough information.

What more could a serious investigative reporter find out?

Here are things that could probably be found with some background research. This first batch of items is limited to things where there are probably official statistics available, or that where statistics could be gleaned from existing sources with some effort. Because this first group of questions has to do with laws, statistics, and budgets, the subject matter is relatively limited, dealing with things that are covered by law or tracked by statistics.

• How many people are in the country illegally?
  
• How many jobs are held by people in the country illegally? What kinds of jobs? What are the typical hours in a work day? In a week? What is the typical pay? Who are the typical employers?
  
• What are the typical living conditions?
  
• Is there any estimate on what percentage of illegal residents have jobs that are intrinsically criminal (e.g. drug smuggling), what percentage have regular jobs, what percentage are day laborers, what percentage are unemployed?
  
• How much money does the average illegal worker send back home to a dependent family in the average month or year?
  
• Which public-funded service programs serve people regardless of citizenship or legal resident status?
  
• How many publicly-funded students are in the country illegally? What percentage is that? What are the percentages on the high and low end of the spectrum for different neighborhoods, cities, counties, states? (Scope depends on the level at which the reporter works.)
  
• How many illegal-resident students receive publicly-funded special services such as bilingual or ESL / ELL programs?
  
• How many illegal-resident students receive free or reduced-price school lunches?
  
• How many crimes are committed by people in the country illegally? Is there an estimate of the financial or human cost of the crimes?
  
• As a percentage, how does the rate of criminals for illegal residents compare to that of citizens and legal residents?
  
• How many people in the prison system are in the country illegally? What is the cost of incarceration? Who pays it? What percentage of the people in the system are in the country illegally?
  
• Where does an illegal resident go to get health care? Who pays the bill?

After the basic statistics and background research had been done and the reporter has a clearer idea what to ask, they could start lining up interviews. I bet every one of my readers could think of good questions to ask. Here are types of people I'd expect would make good interviews:

• Day workers
  
• Illegal residents with regular permanent jobs
  
• Employers
  
• Apartment managers / landlords
  
• Police
  
• Immigration officials
  
• Money transfer / wire transfer workers
  
• Coyotes (professional people-smugglers) if available
  
• School officials: admin; BIL/ESL workers
  
• Hospitals, doctors' offices, local health officials

Here's the thing: if I sit around at a blog and can think of this, I know that a professional reporter could think of this, and better, if they tried. And it's not just these particular issues. Almost every issue of any depth could and should have someone do some serious reporting on it. The financial crisis, unemployment, recent frauds, an expose on how Congress really works ... all kinds of possibilities.

My point is not that a Christian would be (D) or (R); I think political point-scoring would be shunned as dirty pool by someone whose first priority is following Christ. A Christian approach to reporting would go beyond the slogans and canned talking points and get to the people really involved, with an eye to both love and justice.

Fill the earth: population and food

Recently the topic of the world's population was mentioned in a comment thread. Right now "overpopulation" is more of a regional issue than a global issue: there are some regions that have difficulty supporting their populations while others have surplus to export. As a whole, there is not a problem with the world's population having outrun its capacity to produce food. But when considering the possibility that the world's food supply might run tight in the future, occasionally there are drastic suggestions such as mandating abortions to enforce population caps. So it seems right to mention that we have more moderate options available to us before we consider drastic measures.

Larger gains: Increase food production

1. Increase farmland available for food crops by using some of the land currently planted with non-edible crops such as coffee, tea, and tobacco (or opium, marijuana, or cocaine where applicable)
2. Make better use of public land by making plantings in highway interchange "cloverleafs" and placing productive trees in median-plantings
3. Create incentives for private land and landscaping to include food-producing plants
4. Encourage individuals with productive plants to harvest and use the produce rather than letting it go to waste
5. Encourage production of foods that produce optimal nutrition and food volume per acre

Smaller gains: Reduce food use

1. Actually use left-overs
2. Reduce household over-purchasing of food which leads to food spoilage
3. Reduce over-eating
4. Create incentives for restaurants to reduce portion sizes to an amount typically eaten
5. Restrict the number of pets to reduce the total volume of food consumed by pets
6. Make provision for large-scale sources of food scraps (e.g. restaurant waste) to be channeled back for use as livestock feed when suitable

The bigger picture: peace and sound government

Of course, there is a far larger problem in the amount of farmland that is unproductive throughout the world due to war or government corruption. There are entire nations capable of sustaining their populations and possibly capable of being food exporters who nevertheless tend to have famines because often one group burns another's crops. Peace in one more land is probably more beneficial than the "better land use" approach in several others, and better than the "well-used leftovers" approach in 10 others.

The smaller picture: re-thinking our menus

As much as I hope we can work towards peace, I also know it is not directly under our control, and that the simple things we can do here and now in our own homes are the fastest way to begin making a difference. My grandparents, who survived the Great Depression in a very poor and rural area, were masters of using every bit of food. Here's what I learned from my grandmother:

• Old bread that's at risk to spoil makes good bread pudding
• Or good bread crumbs for breading a piece of meat or topping a casserole
• Or croutons
• Or stuffing
• Or melba toast that keeps a long time and goes well with gravy over it
• Or a good filler for a meatloaf
• Leftover bananas about to spoil make good banana bread
• Or smoothies (ok, this was from my son not my grandmother, but it still works)
• Scrap meat and vegetables make soups or stews or broths
• The inedible cornflake crumbs at the bottom of the cornflake box make a good base for breading
• Pickles made from watermelon rinds actually taste very good
• When tomatoes fall off the vine and aren't fully ripe, that's when you make fried green tomatoes

The point?
Before we start restricting population, we have a long way to go in making better use of what we already have. I'm not saying that today is the today to feel bad if you throw out the stale bread instead of making it into croutons or stuffing. I'm saying remembering the thrift of previous generations and taking note of their creativity is a good thing.

Stewardship and Sovereignty

It is an amazing thing that God should entrust the works of his hands to us. This world rightly inspires awe and wonder; yet God has put the world and its creatures into our hands (Genesis 1:28, Psalm 8:6-8). He has also assigned us stewardship or management of our homes and families, our possessions and our days. In many places God's relationship to his people is portrayed as that between a landlord and tenants from whom he expects good management, or between a master and servants to whom he has entrusted his business.

Since mankind generally rebels against God, our being in charge has been more of a curse than a blessing. In the account of man's fall -- whether you take it as allegory or as literal the point still remains -- God had already given mankind dominion in this world, had already made us in the image of God; but we were greedy for more. We didn't want dominion under God, but dominion instead of God, free from God, in place of God. When power is no longer exercised in recognition of God's dominion, power itself becomes corrupted, as they say that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.¹ But it was not power that corrupted us; we corrupted it. We have developed ideas of power and its use that are alien to God. We imagine that power is used to exalt the one who has power, that the glory of the powerful is to always get his way at the expense of others. The lords of the Gentiles lord it over them. But not so with us. The great will be a servant, and the greatest will be slave of all. We know this because the Lord of All laid aside all the trappings and benefits of power to save us; he taught his disciples about being a Lord -- the true Lord, the Lord of Lords -- by dressing in a towel and washing feet. Christ keeps finding ways to get through to us. His humility and love humble us and point us the right direction about managing our trusts under God. More could be said about using our trusts in service of others, in reverence for God, and in a shrewd way ...

More in a related post about the parable of the talents: God's Investment in the World.

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1 - As a case in point about how even our ideas about power are twisted, I remember a definition given me in a college sociology class: the amount of power that Person A has over Person B is the amount of resistance on the part of Person B that can be overcome by the force of Person A. Seems reasonable until you see the Lord of Lords washing feet. Then you start thinking in terms of the amount of power Person A has to help Person B, or befriend him, or otherwise be some good to him.