It seems that there is no time like the present for issues such as this. The intensity and “shrill-ness” of the debate in this country; and also in the Churches, is much stonger (which , in many casesw, means “worse”). As Jim Wallis has been saying about theological views of the Church and its role in the public square: “The answer is not NO theology, but Better theology”. The key to improving our situation and the “quality” of moral/political discourse lies not in “NO discussion”, but in BETTER discussion. But I say this, and I find it hard to come up with how.

This post arose in me in reading a post by Larry on this issue of framing.

Reflecting on Digital Empowerment

The new media allow us to frame the conversation. Framing is critically important. Contemporary mainstream journalism made a turn somewhere in the past few years toward isolating messages (sound bites), often by leaving out context and presenting the most controversial voices. I hear, read and see stories today that don’t even include the old standards–“who, what, when, where, why and how.” Stories are framed as if there are only two opposing positions. This “either-or” form of storytelling doesn’t really get at the complexities that lie somewhere in the middle. It’s sensational and often it’s just plain sloppy journalism. New media allow us to tell our own story.

Itis difficult when many in the Religious Right seem to have a predisposed refusal to accept the legitimacy of any criticism of this administration. They seem to bend over backwards to offer defenses that appear to have little logical support behind them beyond what the administration says about itself, or what Fox News has provided them; I hear the same arguments presented, the same paranoias about the “liberal media” (and an accompanying inability to see how Fox News rep[resents the excat flipside of the kind of “conspiratorial” liberal manipulations of which they accuse all the major networks– all except, of course, for Fox, whose staff receives daily memos from Fox Corporate headquarters, instructing them on what to emphasize that day. This of course, the FoxNews junkies simply refuse to acknowledge.

Indeed, Fox News represents a deliberate effort to determine the framing of the conversation.