Lightly edited copy of a blast email Debi and I sent out to members of our congregation, Peace Lutheran Church of Springfield, in advance of the sixth meeting an adult faith formation book study, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson. We call the group Sundays@6, and it meets over Zoom Sunday evenings at 6 p.m. I archive these emails here so I can find them later if I need them. Link HERE for an explanation of why I use the blog as an electronic filing cabinet.
Hi everyone —
A handout is attached for our next session of Sundays@6, Sunday, Oct. 29, at 6 p.m. As always, we’ll meet over Zoom and will be online from 5:45 to chat and work out technical glitches. We’ll be discussing Section 5 of Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” which is titled “The Consequences of Caste.”
Last week’s discussion, we thought, was one of our best ever. We related Wilkerson’s concept of caste as a pervasive, racialized hierarchy, or pecking order, to today’s news, including the Middle East conflict and the effects of Israeli military occupation on ELCA’s sister congregation, Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem in the Occupied Territories. We kept coming back to “Caste” and to the question that’s guiding us: What can we do as church, and as individuals of faith, to make things better? As the quote we shared last week from the Talmud says: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
One of the things we discussed last week was how to discern which news sources are trustworthy. We’d like to pass along a link sent to us by [name redacted] to the Web site for Ad Fontes Media, which rates dozens of news sources for bias and accuracy, and includes an interactive Media Bias Chart. Thanks, [redacted]! Link here:
[I can’t link to it, but Wikipedia — at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Fontes_Media — has a description of the Denver-based organization, along with a working link in the Ad Fontes Media, Inc. box at the right of the page. ]
Debi mentioned the Web site AllSides, which takes each day’s top news stories from the left, center and right of the political spectrum and displays them side by side so readers can get a feel for how each side’s news media may be slanting their coverage. The site also provides media bias ratings for over 800 media outlets and writers, so the reader can easily identify different perspectives. Link here:
Another great source is FactCheck.org, which monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews and news releases. The Web site also offers a guide on how to spot fake or misleading news, as well as step by step instructions on how to flag misleading news on Facebook. Link here for the organization’s web site:
Pete was also asked for advice on how to deal with “fake news,” since he worked for the State Journal-Register and taught journalism at Benedictine, and he promised to see what he could find. One resource he thinks will be useful is a 2017 article in Forbes by Paul Glader, a journalism prof at King’s College in New York City. Link here:
Glader’s article is headlined “10 Journalism Brands Where You Find Real Facts Rather Than Alternative Facts”; he says there are still objective, reliable, ethical, professional sources of news out there:
One key question for any publication is this: If a reporter gets facts in a story wrong, will the news outlet investigate a complaint and publish a correction? Does the publication have its own code of ethics? Or does it subscribe to and endorse the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics? And if a reporter or editor seriously violates ethical codes – such as being a blatant or serial plagiarizer, fabulist or exaggerator – will they be fired at a given news outlet? While some may criticize mainstream media outlets for a variety of sins, top outlets such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News and the New Republic have fired journalists for such ethics violations. That is remarkable in a world where some celebrities, politicians and other realms of media (other than news… such as Hollywood films “based on a true story”) can spread falsehood with impunity.
Poynter [oops! I meant Glader] also recommends – and links to – the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., which has some excellent media literacy resources available online. He adds that it’s important to keep up with local news:
In the post-post truth age (that is, an age where one has to work hard to be media literate and find the truthful sources of information), citizens should support local and regional publications that hew to ethical journalism standards and cover local government entities. In my corner of Long Island, that means I read (and sometimes write for) the Great Neck News and the chain of local newspapers to which it belongs. This year, I also plan to subscribe to Newsday, which is the largest paper that covers Long Island. I would urge citizens to subscribe to their local newspapers as well. This action helps these organizations employ journalists who attend city hall meetings, school board meetings and police precincts to report on how your tax-dollars are being spent, how your constitutional rights are being safeguarded, and to serve as watch dogs on how well your elected officials are serving you.
In Springfield, the SJ-R is still hanging on, and Illinois Times has decent coverage of city government and a variety of local issues. Pete likes to get his Illinois state news from Capitol Fax, an online blog/newsletter that focuses on state politics and government.
On the national level, Glader recommends the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other legacy media. Most of them are behind paywalls, but typically you can read 2 or 3 articles per month for free. BBC News, Politico and the wire services — especially the Associated Press and Reuters — are entirely free of charge and available online. “You can’t exactly ‘subscribe’ to these wire services,” says Glader. “But you can trust reports from these organizations to be factual. They provide a backbone of news and information flows about politics and the economy.”
Also free online are selected stories from NPR, the PBS NewsHour, CNN and the legacy broadcast media – ABC, CBS and NBC. As the war in the Middle East intensifies, Pete is supplementing American media with public broadcasting services from Europe — in addition to BBC, the German TV network Deutsche Welle and FRANCE 24. Sky News, an independent TV network in the UK, is perhaps the best of the lot. He thinks the US media are fairly objective, but they suffer from the same limitation as coverage of the Olympics — they tend to focus on Americans and neglect the rest of the world. Five- to 10-minute video clips from all are available on YouTube.
Zoom link and coming attractions
As always, we’ll meet over Zoom. A link is available in Peace Lutheran’s online newsletter, News You Can Use. You can also join the session by using this link, meeting ID and passcode:
[Redacted]
If for some reason you can’t get this link or the one in the newsletter to work, you can reach us by telephone at [redacted].
Next week, Nov. 5, we’ll discuss Part 6 (Chapters 25-29), on the all-too-familiar topic of “Backlash.” And week after next, Nov. 12, we’ll finish the book, with Part 7 “Awakening.” As always, we’ll return the question of what we can do, as church and as individuals, to help overcome the effects of caste.
Over the holidays we’ll catch our breath, and in January we plan to start up again with a new book that will take us through Epiphany and Lent into the Easter season. Debi and Pete are previewing “The Color of Compromise,” an excellent book by Jemar Tisby, a Black historian who writes about the church’s complicity in institutional racism and how the church, as church, can fight racism today. But we’re open to suggestions. So if you have a book to recommend, let us know!
See you Sunday at 6!
— Debi and Pete
[Published Oct. 29, 2023]
Ordinary Time 