Critically reading the other hand.

Ruge-Jones, Phil

In one of the most cited comments by any theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth exhorted pastors to preach with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Many have followed his advice, finding in newspapers and other news media a valuable resource for contextualizing the Word of God. They have done this out of a commitment to the God who has created this world and who still cares passionately about it.

The events that take place in our own time and place are matters of utmost concern to the Creator. As God's creatures we are called to think through our relationship to events that happen in the sphere that God has brought into being. The incarnation of Jesus also demands that our own theology be an incarnate one. Since God so loved the world that the Word took on flesh in the world, how can the community that calls itself by Jesus' name not be utterly engaged in the issues around us? Finally, the God who creates and redeems us remains present among us in the Holy Spirit who makes all things new. (1) Christians therefore listen and watch for signs of the times that indicate the contemporary movement of the Spirit. Karl Barth would applaud attentiveness to the movement of God in our midst, but he would also undoubtedly offer stringent warnings to us. He would be grieved that, while biblical scholarship has maintained a growing critical awareness in relationship to the reading of Scriptures, the script in the other hand--or, more often these days, the television-channel changer--is often taken in naively with little critical sensibility at all. Temptation bids us to take the mainstream media at their word and to hold to their version of the truth as an uncritically accepted source for theological reflection.

Preachers would do well to remember that Barth's own turning point and the loud "No!" he shouted that reshaped twentieth-century theology occurred because of what he read in a newspaper and found to be a betrayal of all that God stands for. He read there a manifesto of support for German war policies signed by ninety-three German intellectuals including, most painfully for Barth, the leading liberal theologians who had been his teachers. In the newspaper Barth found a word that the Word could not tolerate. In Barth's hand, the Bible became a tool for attacking the idolatrous message of the newspaper that he held in his other hand. With the Word of God he called into question the versions of truth peddled by government and media in the name of a misguided nationalism.

Barth reminds us of the dangers of totalizing versions of truth. One need not accept all of his theological assumptions to develop a theological motivation for critically reading our own media.

Part of the Christian inheritance is a wariness of official versions of the truth. The majority of the Scriptures that Christians claim were written and collected as a critical alternative to the official stories of their days. Whether the imperial force that demanded allegiance was Assyria, Babylon, or the Roman Empire, the Scriptures defined faithfulness over and against the hegemonic claims that enslaved the people of God. Even those writings that were collected in times of stability and relative freedom for Israel often launch a critique of Israel's own version of the truth and the way that it could cover up the plight of the poor. The difficulty that those in power have in seeing themselves critically and thus interpreting the story of the day in a manner that would threaten their way of life also provides major obstacles to reading the Good News appropriately. As Richard Horsley, among others, has stated, "we readers located in the modern imperial metropolis may have difficulty discerning [the gospel's chief] indications." (2)

One response to the totalizing forces of those who would market a restricted version of the truth is to interject diversity into the descriptions. Multiple perspectives, sometimes even contradictory ones, stand side by side in the Bible and provide a fuller picture than any one of them alone could. In 1 Samuel 8-12, for example, human kingship is first described as an unfaithful rejection of God's sovereignty, but later the same kingship is accepted as an unfortunate but necessary concession to human stubbornness. Multiple examples of this kind of diversity occur in the New Testament as well, the four Gospels being chief among them. Not one version of Christianity's great story but four are necessary. Each of them stands defiantly asserting its idiosyncratic version of the Good News, sometimes with the others but often in very distinctive ways. Each of them is infinitely more interesting than the unified and synthesized versions of the story that misguided individuals have created to clear up the diversity. (3)

Although diversity begins to address the danger of a monolithic and idolatrous version of the truth, this does not mean that all claims therefore stand on equal ground. Christians who follow the one crucified by the guardians of Rome's official story would do well to adopt what Mary Solberg calls an "epistemology of the cross." Such an epistemology asks whose voices speak in the media and whose voices are silenced. It asks whose interests a particular version of the truth serves and whose it harms. Solberg writes, "to the degree that relatively undistorted and ethically defensible knowing matter, the place of the least favored--at the foot of the cross, in all its contemporary forms--is a better place to start than any place of domination could be." (4)

Solberg's vision flows out of Martin Luther's thought. Luther knew from experience the dangers created by those who present a monolithic version of the truth and have the resources to promote it in the public sphere. In his Heidelberg Disputation he named such pretensions "volatilem cognitatum," that is, "understanding that is prone to violence." (5) In the face of violent knowledge Luther proposes that Christians must "call a thing what it is." In order to do that one must be willing to look for the attack on God's presence in the midst of suffering and violence. A faithful follower of the God of Jesus will be attentive especially to the plight of those who are most often neglected in official stories.

With this theological bias, we turn to analyze the problem of reading today's news media and propose a practical strategy for interpreting them in a critical and faithful manner.

Why citizens must become media critics

The current situation of the American news media makes critical reading and active searching for a variety of perspectives both essential and easier than in the pre-Internet era. Mainstream news media face a number of pressures that result in a narrowing of the topics covered and a simplification of coverage. The consolidation of ownership of news media is one pressure on complex news coverage. Another pressure is the requirement that news divisions earn profits on a previously unimagined scale for their corporate owners. The race for profits leads to cost cutting. That the bosses are no longer news people but corporate executives leaves serious journalists trying to explain the nature of their product to people who do not share the service ethos that formerly permeated newsrooms.

Some media scholars argue that the consolidation of ownership of local newspapers and radio and television stations has resulted in a monopoly on information by a few very rich individuals who also enjoy relationships with the United States' political elite. (6) These scholars see the influence of the political views of the wealthy people who own such media organizations as Fox News and CNN trumping the established news value of objectivity in the reporting of the news. They believe that the owners' political preferences determine the stories that are covered as well as the choice of sources of information.

Other scholars argue that corporate control of the media has resulted in the naturalization of "the corporate voice" as the American view. (7) In other words, the news media present current events through their impact on the interests of large corporations. We have become so used to this "frame" for news that we see it as the natural way to interpret events. News editors and reporters generally claim that they make decisions independent of media owners' biases, but some scholars argue that the independence is perceived only because the journalists do not stray outside limits that match the perspectives of their superiors. The result is self-censorship that is often explained by concern for the practical considerations of keeping one's job or making a decent career in the field. (8)

It seems logical, then, that concentration of ownership of the "press" in the hands of the few would cause restriction of the number and types of voices that the average news consumer hears. But other scholars have examined this "homogenization hypothesis" and found that mainstream media were rather closed to alternative interpretations even before the consolidation of ownership that took place across the country in the 1980s and 1990s. A study of the content of more than 90 local newspapers found that no matter the ownership conditions--monopoly, quasi-monopoly, or competitive--news content varied little. (9) In towns with only one daily newspaper, two dailies owned by the same conglomerate, or multiple dailies with a variety of owners, stories mention a similarly narrow range of actors; stories appearing throughout the same paper present little disagreement of views. The authors of this study concluded that the pressures of the market operate similarly on news outlets, no matter their ownership. Competitive papers are trying to attract the same mass audience and mass advertisers as monopoly-owned papers in order to turn a profit. The concentration of ownership, according to this study, does little to restrict the diversity of coverage in media because the coverage is narrow to begin with.

Corporate cost cutting is one of the main problems facing news organizations. Walter Cronkite, an icon of American news reporting, warns continually of the effect of budget reductions on international news coverage. Few news organizations have bureaus abroad; instead, they practice what has been termed "parachute journalism" by relying on stringers until a huge story breaks. The names and faces the audience has come to associate with coverage of wars and other upheaval are those of reporters who fly into complex situations as they are unfolding without the benefit of background acquired by long-term observation on the spot. (10) Budget reductions also limit the amount of investigative reporting news organizations can conduct on domestic issues and the number of reporters available to cover the news. Overworked reporters increasingly rely on news releases issued by large corporations and government offices because they do not have time to do extensive legwork themselves. (11) News organizations rely more on elite official sources (such as government press offices) who are easy to reach and eager to place their messages in the press. For similar reasons, the media cover official events, such as press conferences and speeches, rather than searching for a variety of sources outside of corporations and government offices.

The power of frames

As if this were not enough for the overworked pastor to have to think about, elements of the regular media work routine also lead to the reduction of complex issues to simpler terms that can be presented as shorthand in headlines and brief broadcast news stories. The resulting news frames influence the way the audience understands issues and are remarkably similar in mainstream media (for the same reasons outlined above on choice of stories to cover and sources to consult).

Pastors have probably experienced the power of frames in their work. When a person listens to a sermon through a powerful personal frame, he or she may hear the opposite of what the pastor is saying on an issue because the frames differ too widely. The frames through which we see the world are built over a lifetime and influence both how we construct and how we perceive the news.

Reporters begin their research with certain considerations in mind that may set the frame in which the details of the event at hand are placed. Reporters consider, intentionally or not, the prevailing political ideology, the probable responses of their superiors and sources to the story, and the angle their news organization is likely to take on the story. (12) Framing techniques create a particular impression without explicitly revealing support for a particular interpretation of events. Thus, the news report appears to be objective, because it follows a format we have been taught to associate with objectivity, but subtle turns of phrase, labels, illustrations, and word choices embed the subject in larger interpretive schema.

Scholars analyze frames to aid in understanding how texts convey particular perspectives on issues. (13) A frame, which we might think of more simply as the context in which the story is placed, can define the problem, diagnose causes, make moral judgments, and suggest remedies for the problem. These four functions of framing may be present in one sentence or be developed through an entire story, news program, or issue of a newspaper or magazine. Analysis of frames also provides a helpful way of thinking about the act of preaching itself. Frames can be located in the communicator (the way you see the issue addressed in this Sunday's sermon), the text (the script of the sermon), the receiver (the preexisting conceptions of members of the congregation), and the culture (the prevailing views on the issue in current ideology, values, etc.). In the case of news reporting, the communicator, a reporter or editor, makes conscious or unconscious judgments about how to present a story based on preexisting beliefs that are embedded in the text as frames. Frames appear in the text in keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, and selections of information sources. The receiver (in this case a consumer of news reports) approaches the subject of the story with a set of frames as well. These may or may not correspond to the frames embedded in the text. In fact, readers are more likely to notice frames in a text when these do not correspond to their own preconceived ideas. Culture provides frames that a large group of people hold in common; this may be the strongest source of frames of the four locations.

Frames highlight certain aspects of the available information and deemphasize others. They begin to work at the point of the selection of events to cover. The selection of these elements of reality to highlight increases their salience. At the same time, frames also determine which elements of reality will be omitted from coverage.

As we look for urgent topics that require a critical reading of the media, the obvious issue at the time of this writing is the war in Iraq. This is the subject where the temptation to wed the media to a particular official frame is most potent. Attention to a sampling of issues in relation to the war will show the workings of powerful frames and the need to reflect critically on the frames in which other issues like poverty, crime, and economics are also embedded. We are painfully aware that an analysis of the Iraq war merits many more pages than we are able to offer here.

One basic unit of framing is word choice. What does it mean, for example, to introduce discussion of the war under the rubric of "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? What difference would it make if the story began with "the widely unpopular occupation of Iraq"? The term "terrorist" is often used as though its meaning is transparent; yet one frame's terrorist is another frame's patriot. Other words and phrases like "full sovereignty," "friendly fire," "fundamentalist," "liberation," and "precision weapons" come together to create a particular effect. Attention to those words, and the words not chosen, is an essential part of a critical reading of the media.

Jack Lule studied the use of metaphors in the language used in NBC's coverage of the final weeks before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Lule mentions the metaphors NBC's reporters used, including "countdown" and "showdown," for example, which both imply that conflict is inevitable. Lule concludes by asking what might have turned out differently if the NBC journalists had chosen other possible metaphors. He points out the vast difference between a showdown and, for example, a debate, a word that lacks the sense of inevitability of a violent outcome. (14)

Maintenance of a frame also determines which events are selected for coverage, that is, which events are salient to the unfolding story. In the case of the current war in Iraq, for example, serious discussion of Iraqi civilian casualties is rarely considered, probably because this element of the war does not fit the frame of Americans as liberators of Iraq.

Powerful, persistent frames may lead to serious distortions of reality. When news organizations use such distorting frames, their consumers, predictably, end up with misperceptions of news events. A study done in the summer of 2003 by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland surveyed consumers of various media on their understanding of three specific issues: whether there was specific evidence that links al-Qaeda to Iraq, whether actual weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, and whether world public opinion favored the U.S. launching the war with Iraq. Overall, 60 percent of those polled misunderstood one of these three issues. Almost half of CNN and NBC viewers and slightly more than half the newspaper readers surveyed answered at least one of the three questions incorrectly. Consumers of NPR and PBS were almost four times more likely to understand the issues than Fox viewers: 77 percent of the public broadcasting audience answered all three questions correctly, while 80 percent of Fox viewers got the answers wrong. These differences correlate to political postures that individuals take. The Nieman Report states, "Among those with none of the misperceptions listed above, only 23 percent supported the war. Among those with one of these misperceptions, 53 percent supported the war, rising to 78 percent with those who have two of the misperceptions, and to 86 percent with all three of the misperceptions." (15)

Attention to the editorial pages may open up critical awareness of bias for other stories in each press since in these editorials the authors openly state the stances that lie behind their daily decisions. The print media, which come off relatively well in the PIPA report, also had difficulty distancing themselves critically from the administration's frame for the war.

In the Columbia Journalism Review Chris Mooney has reviewed the editorial pages of major newspapers in their response to the impending war. George W. Bush's motive for the war, at least in the early days, focused on the "imminent threat" that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. This cause was buttressed by Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations that attempted to make a case for the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The editorial pages in The Washington Post described Powell's case as "irrefutable" and spoke of Iraq's "lethal menace." (16) The Wall Street Journal wrote that this action was "above all about American self-defense." USA Today saw Powell's speech as presenting "new and forceful evidence." (17)

The New York Times took a more critical stance. The Times accepted the evidence for the existence of WMDs but questioned the wisdom of attacking without the United Nations' support. Most critical of all was the Los Angeles Times that questioned numerous claims by Powell (although not the existence of WMDs) and chastised an administration willing to invade without UN support. (18)

With hindsight most of these editors must blush at their enthusiastic support of misinformation. Yet the fact that the Los Angeles Times did not jump into the administration frame shows that even at this early point serious questions could have been asked.

Off the editorial pages, the media also echoed the official frame. Michael Massing has done an important study on how the media helped create faith in the existence of an imminent threat to the United States from Saddam Hussein. (19) According to Massing, The New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who covered the issue of WMDs, seized upon the aluminum tubes discovered as evidence of a nuclear program despite the fact that expert sources she interviewed clearly stated that this was questionable. Whereas she did mention that technical experts disagreed, she used the words of "a top senior administration official" to undermine their correct analysis, quoting him as saying the differences among experts is "a footnote, not a split." (20) In an interesting turn of events, Miller not only repeated the administration's position, she strengthened it, providing the very evocative language that Condoleezza Rice would use when appearing on CNN. Taking nearly verbatim Miller's own metaphor, Rice stated, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." (21) Miller's front-page headlines and stories helped create the frame that justified the United States' attack on Iraq. In a remarkable admission of a warped sense of journalistic vocation, Miller stated what is certainly a minority view among reporters when she said, "my job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." (22)

If serious print media took on such a bias, the situation was even worse on the major network news shows. A report prepared by the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) looked at on-camera sources in the nightly news programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC during the month of October 2003. Of the 319 sources that appeared on camera, 73 percent were current or former U.S. officials or their appointees on the Iraqi Governing Council. FAIR writes, "Overwhelmingly, the Iraq story was told through U.S. eyes, with 81 percent American sources and only 10 percent Iraqi." (23)

The news frame of clean and accurate American military power made news coverage a platform for the Bush administration and determined the boundaries of the story. American officials did not mention civilian casualties brought about by the U.S. invasion. Such discussions did not fit into the official frame, which the mainstream news media presented uncritically. Only ten sources of the 319 even broached the topic of civilian deaths. All of these discussions took place on CBS in two stories. The first six were in response to a critical report issued by Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org) on the abuse of civilians, a story the other networks apparently could not fit into their frame. The other four were in a story on the death of civilians from Coalition countries who had been shot at by soldiers in the Coalition forces. (24) The death of thousands of Iraqi noncombatant men, women, and children did not fit the frame of interest of any of these news shows. During other months when the effect on Iraq's citizens were reported, these deaths and displacements were understood under the rubric of "accidents." Another FAIR report noted that during a spot on NBC Nightly News, "Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported, without a trace of irony, that military officials predict that 'thousands' of Iraqi civilians may 'be killed entirely by accident in an intensive bombing campaign.'" (25)

This brings us back to where we began. All elements of news coverage--selection of events to cover, words chosen to describe them, images selected to illustrate them--support one of many possible frames, and one frame may become so powerful that it completely excludes other possible interpretations of an issue.

Strategies for looking outside a powerful frame

Given the restrictions we have discussed, certain techniques can aid in the critical reading of the sources in question.

1. Expose yourself to media reports from a variety of sources including some that are produced outside of the United States. While it may not be possible to do this on a regular basis, certainly take the time to do so on issues you plan to address in a sermon.

2. Be aware of the leanings that are typical in the sources that you most frequently use. Examine who makes the decisions for these sources. For example, how much local control is there in decision making on which stories get covered and how they are covered? Familiarity with the editorials written by the staff of the paper also provides the most frank expression of a medium's bias. The choice of stories that receive preferential placement on the front page might also indicate bias.

3. Ask yourself which sources have been consulted and given voice in the story. Whose voices are granted the most authority? Whose perspectives are undercut by the way they are introduced? Whose voice gets to trump someone else's? What is the balance of various groups that have been consulted? Republicans and Democrats? Males and females? Hawks or doves? White or Black? Administration or its critics? Workers or owners? Civilian or military? Domestic or international commentators? Be especially attentive to those voices that disrupt the dominant perspective, and seek out more information on those sources when possible.

4. Be attentive to the framing of a story. What larger narratives is the story written to affirm? Which narratives does it deny? Where are qualifiers like "so-called" or "alleged" used? Are "unnamed sources" cited? Given the information you have access to, how might you have told the story differently? After reading an article, ask yourself if the evidence garnered in the story warrants the title that it has been given. Often an article will be more nuanced in its story than the title suggests. Yet the large type can bias the consumer to be more receptive to some evidence and less to others.

5. Ask yourself what spectrum of perspectives have been considered as legitimate or viable. If the options available are A through Z, has the story framed the possibilities in such a way that only P through Z are presented as the full field of perspectives? For example, at the brink of war, were those who were skeptical of going to war on the grounds of a lack of international support pitted against those who supported the administration's rationale without recognizing those voices who thought the war was simply an unacceptable response on other moral grounds? The practice of restricting the spectrum leads to a trivializing of perspectives that fall outside of the framer's supposedly reasonable alternatives. Alternatively, has the story been set up in such a way that there are only two extreme positions possible, with all middle ground ignored out of existence and one of the two responses presented as the only truly viable option?

6. Just as the media may be more nuanced in its stories than in its titles, the media often is more expansive in its explorations than featured stories would indicate. Be attentive to articles that are buried in the back pages of a paper but that disrupt the typical rhythms of the official story. Take in the information presented there, and ask yourself why key disruptive stories were not given more prominence. Consult serious critics of mainstream reporting, so-called media watchdogs, to find alternative interpretations.

Media watchdogs and blogs

Journalists themselves are aware of the difficulties of providing accurate reporting that is not biased toward any particular political position and have established various organizations to critique and assist other professionals in the field. The Pew Research Center for People and the Press (http://people-press.org), Poynter Institute (www.poynter.org), and the Nieman Foundation (www.nieman.harvard.edu) publish reports on the current performance of the news media and offer training to improve journalists' ability to cover the news fairly and ethically. The reports of these organizations also provide a ready source of information for citizens who are looking beyond shallow mainstream views. Focusing heavily on survey research, the Pew Center studies what the mainstream media are covering and how audiences are responding to the coverage. For example, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that almost 80 percent of American Internet users got information about Iraq during the first week of the war. (27) The Center also reveals the nexus of news coverage and governmental policy. The Poynter Institute's main focus is media ethics.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University publishes the Nieman Reports and recently launched Nieman Watchdog: Questions the Press Should Ask (www.niemanwatchdog.org), a Web site that presents questions posed by experts in fields that are currently in the news. (27) The site aims to use the knowledge base of the experts to help journalists inform their reporting. In the process of offering this service, the site also provides valuable information and perspectives for citizens to delve more deeply into current events than mainstream media reports.

The site's editors, veterans of The Washington Post and other major American newspapers, also provide guidance to enter the new and exciting sphere of reporters' blogs. Blogs--journals kept on the World Wide Web--written by independent journalists are one of the newest opportunities to dig more deeply into the issues surrounding events that concern us. They are also one of the trickiest areas to navigate. Because anyone can blog, readers can run into the same kind of misinformation as one may hear on talk radio. Recommendations from experienced journalists can lead Web surfers to those blogs that offer in-depth reporting along with commentary and criticism of the way journalists are handling current stories. Blogs may be the most important new source of independent commentary by media observers.

On the war in Iraq

Numerous resources are available for those who would like to extend their reading on the war in Iraq to sources that question the dominant framing of events. The problem, then, is not finding information, it is sifting through the mountain of material that is easily accessible on the World Wide Web. A good place to begin is the American Press Institute's page "Iraq and U.S. Conflict." (28) This page features links to 75 Web resources, including such official sources as White House and Defense Department press briefings; major media reports, including those of CNN, ABC, MSNBC, PBS Frontline, The New York Times, and al-Jazeera's English-language page (http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage); background materials from academic experts and nongovernmental organizations; governmental sources from Iraq and other countries; and less official Weblogs.

While large and influential American news organizations maintain powerfully similar frames, their reports are still useful. Nevertheless, it pays to learn a little bit about the organization and the reporter. For example, does the reporter speak Arabic? Anthony Shadid, winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, is one of few American correspondents in Iraq who does. (29) Those who do not must rely on translators and may miss nuances in sources' comments. Where was the correspondent when the report was written? Did he or she actually witness the events reported in the story? Did he or she rely on a variety of sources, or is the bulk of the material drawn from official news conferences? Some war correspondents now have contracts with their organizations that allow them to publish uncut versions of their stories on their own Weblogs if the newspaper or magazine edits portions out of the story. Christopher Allbritton began his work in Iraq as an independent reporter who published only on his own "Back to Iraq" Weblog. He now writes for TIME and The New York Daily News while concurrently maintaining his blog, where he posts his full reports. (30) This blog contains Allbritton's reports and impressions of living and working in Baghdad.

In addition to reading independent and alternative U.S. news media, news reports from around the world are within easy reach online. While not a complete listing of all news sites on the Web, the Web site world-newspapers.com provides a list of news sources, which may be searched by country. News sources from English-speaking countries include the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk), The Times of India (http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com), and Australian reports, available at News Interactive (http://www.news.com.au). Reports framed for readers in countries that oppose U.S. policies in Iraq provide news through entirely different frames than those used by American or allied countries' media. For a sampling of these reports in English try the French wire service Agence France-Presse reports (http://www.afp.com/english/home) and Germany's Spiegel Online (http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/).

Nongovernmental organizations, like FAIR, established in 1986 to work with activists and journalists to invigorate the First Amendment, provide counterpoints to the mainstream media's framing of events in Iraq. The American Press Institute's section "Iraq and the Media" contains articles on coverage by particular media outlets, the Bush administration's framing of the war, and explications of common word usage in mainstream reports. (31)

Conclusion

This article is intended to help readers see some ways of encountering the complexity of news media. We have suggested dynamics we all should be aware of when we reflect on the most common sources available and some strategies to make our readings of those sources more critical. Just as reading the Scriptures critically is a skill that we learned over time and with repeated practice, so also is the tool of critically reading the media. This article is not meant to discourage anyone from consuming news media but to make us more informed consumers.

The goal of the preacher generally is not to offer one more political commentary but rather to help shape and radically reshape the frame within which the people of God interpret all news and events that come their way. The tools we offer here are most helpful in preparation for preaching, not in the act of preaching itself. Just as we use the critical tools for biblical interpretation in order to prepare sermons and do not overburden our listeners with historical-critical material, the critical tools used in evaluating the events of the day serve to prepare us for the pastoral task of preaching the Good News in the midst of the daily news. God calls us to speak a word of hope to a world in need of that word. Having listened to the world in which we live, we are also ready to speak a challenging word of life to it on God's behalf that all things might be made new.

1. A thorough discussion of the theological foundations for contextuality can be found in Douglas John Hall's Thinking the Faith (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989), 69-144.

2. Richard A. Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark's Gospel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 45.

3. For a thorough discussion of the Gospels' diversity see David Rhoads, The Challenge of Diversity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 1-38.

4. Mary M. Solberg, Compelling Knowledge: A Feminist Proposal for an Epistemology of the Cross (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 17.

5. Philip Ruge-Jones, "Cross in Tensions: Theology of the Cross as Theologico-Social Critique" (Ph.D. diss., Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, 1999), 128.

6. Ben H. Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 5th ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1997).

7. Herbert Schiller, Culture, Inc. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

8. Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality: The Politics of Mass Media (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985), 38-40.

9. Robert Entman, Democracy without Citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

10. Walter Cronkite, A Reporter's Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 373-84.

11. Patricia A. Curtin, "Reevaluating Public Relations Information Subsidies: Market-Driven Journalism and Agenda-Building Theory and Practice," Journal of Public Relations Research 11:1 (1999), 53-91.

12. Parenti, Inventing Reality, 45.

13. Robert M. Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm," Journal of Communication 43:4 (Autumn 1993), 52. The following discussion of framing is based on Entman's article.

14. Jack Lule, "War and Its Metaphors: News Language and the Prelude to War in Iraq, 2003," Journalism Studies 5:2 (2004), 179-90.

15. Steven Kull, "The Press and Public Misperceptions about the Iraq War," The Nieman Reports (Summer 2004), 64-66.

16. Chris Mooney, "The Editorial Pages and the Case for War," Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 2004), 28-34.

17. Mooney, "The Editorial Pages," 29.

18. Mooney, "The Editorial Pages," 30.

19. Michael Massing, "Now They Tell Us," The New York Review of Books (February 26, 2004).

20. Massing, "Now They Tell Us," 44.

21. Ibid.

22. Massing, "Now They Tell Us," 48.

23. Steve Rendall and Tara Broughel, "Amplifying Officials, Squelching Dissent: FAIR Study Finds Democracy Poorly Served by War Coverage," Extra! (May/June 2003) http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/warstudy.html.

24. Ibid.

25. Rachel Coen and Peter Hart, "Brushing Aside the Pentagon's 'Accidents': US Media Minimized, Sanitized Iraq War's Civilian Toll," Extra! (May/June 2003) http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/civilian.html.

26. Lee Raine, Susanna Fox, and Deborah Fallows, "The Internet and the Iraq War: How Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Learn War News, to Understand Events, and Promote Their Views," Pew Internet and American Life Project. http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Iraq_War_Report.pdf.

27. Nieman Foundation news release, available at http://www.nieman.harvard.edu.

28. http:www.americanpressinstitute.org/content/3948.cfm

29. http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2004/international-reporting/bio/

30. "Back to Iraq 3: Blogger-Journo Balances Dual Role in War Zone," Online Journalism Review. http://ojr.org/ojr/workplace/1089248925.php. Back to Iraq is located at http://www.back-to-iraq.com.

31. http://www.fair.org/international/iraq.html.

Robin Bisha and Phil Ruge-Jones

Assistant Professor of Communication (rbisha@tlu.edu)

Assistant Professor of Theology (pruge-jones@tlu.edu)

Texas Lutheran University, Seguin, Texas