Basic HTML Version
PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, March 6, 1981
Page 13
"In part the very nature of the (news] med
makes this inevitable. Their
whole existence is predicated on the purveyance of 'news,' which gives an
automatic advantage to spokesmen for any unfamiliar, and especially any
iconoclastic, position. Furthermore, the journalistic profession seems
overwhelmingly to attract people who want to think of themselves as
advanced and enlightened ....
"Moral traditionalists have thus been conditioned, through the schools,
the media, and even the churches, to assume that their own beliefs are
matters of taste, not based on anything solid or defensible. They are
made to feel that they have no right to impede society's changes. An
entire industry has sprung up to 'help' people learn to accept with
equanimity whatever happens to the world....
"Real discussion of the future course of Western society has in effect
been banned from the public sphere by the tacit judgment that certain
opinions (concerning the social effects of the decline of organized
religion, for example) represent merely unenlightened prejudice and are
not to be taken seriously. People who are shaken by the breakdown of the
family, by the breakdown of morality, or by violent crimes are assured
that their alarm is based on misapprehensions. Nothing is regarded as
worth becoming exercised about, since almost all social change is assumed
t � be for the . best. The media, partial to change because change pro
vides automatic drama, endeavor to make life � spectator sport ••.."
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau