Why every Christian should care about the demise of newspapers

A little noticed, but calamitous effect of current ignorance of the Bible in Britain, is the demise of news.  The connection seems obscure but that’s because obscurity is the price of lukewarm faith.   

Like unwise virgins, we have let our oil run dry and we are not watching for the return of the Bridegroom. The link between Bible-reading, journalism and democracy is a subject we must understand, or lose freedom itself. 

Why print matters

The statistics are astonishing. In the UK alone, 293 newspapers have closed since 2005. In America it’s 2,500. The whole world is affected by Big Tech’s colonising of advertising revenues, on which print depended for income. 52 per cent of the world’s journalists have been laid off in that time because there is no money to pay them.   

We must understand the link between Bible-reading, journalism, and democracy, or we lose freedom itself

The exodus of advertising bucks to the online platforms Google and Facebook, have crippled the industry. Platforms on which the publishers have come to depend for circulation have copped all the cash, while they feast for free on the hard work of the journalists. For 20 years they have paid nothing for the journalism they put in their shop windows, while charging a 35% tax on every advert placed next to those hard-won stories we all rely on, none of which goes to the news organisations themselves. 

But online is no substitute for hard copy in a lively, informed democracy.   

Research carried out by the Independent found that time spent with online content of the same newspaper fell by an awesome 81 per cent. So we are not paying attention to what’s going on as news deserts form all around us. That’s because we are no longer able to do so. No one is there any longer to report what’s happening at councils, courts, and in commerce, and the bad guys are getting away quite possibly with murder. 

Those are the statistics. What then is the connection with the Bible? 

News of God

It has to do with the Reformation, and public truth; with the invention of printing in 1450 and with Bible translation; with Luther’s resolve to make biblical truth public truth, and save Europe from the corruption and obfuscations of the institutional church.   

The creation of a mass market for the Bible generated literacy, as people wanted to read the amazing insights Protestant and Puritan theologians were laying bare for them. It led to the formation of public opinion itself. And, in Britain, that led to the very first “public square”, as the big issues of the day began to be hammered out by rival newspapers to win legitimacy for the differing political groups.   

First pamphlets, then “diurnals” and “courantos” began to emerge to carry the news and a whole range of views. In fact, news was news of God.  Once the Calvinists challenged the superstitious religiosity of the day, and taught that reality itself was God’s truth, it made empirical science possible and reportage became reliable, exhilarating and viscerally relevant.   

But even more radical than all this was the invention of discourse itself.   

God speaks your language

Newspapers generate discourse - which is a way of saying they mediate the nation’s conversation with itself.   

TV and radio do it too, but print is way more important, and if you don’t believe me, the evidence is there even today: despite the horrendous meltdown of the media as a whole, one investor, Paul Marshall, has just paid £100 million for The Spectator, at auction. In other words, he had to bid aggressively against competition. It shows a vote of confidence in the nation’s oldest news magazine.   

In order to understand the sacred foundations of all discourse, we have to wind back a long way. The forgotten truth lies in the Sinai event - and the invention of Hebrew that arose from it. 

The giving of the Ten Commandments was momentous not just for Moses and his ragtag band of desert wanderers 3,000 years ago in the mists of ancient history.  Something happened there that was of such enormity that scribes and prophets began to write down the speech of the people so that they could disseminate to them what they believed was on the heart of God for their welfare. 

They began to understand that history itself was the dealings of a just and righteous God with his people.   

Law was his instruction manual for their well-being.  And prophesy was his direct word to promote justice and truth - in language that people could understand. 

According to research carried out by biblical archaeologist Seth Sanders and published in an outstanding book The Invention of Hebrew, this was the first time in history that vernacular speech had been written down. The Bible is the result. There were other alphabets and scripts, but none that explored life itself in the common tongue. There were inscriptions in cuneiform – code signs on waymarks and cave walls – but these were markers denoting royal dominion, not the dealings of God with men in the minutiae of life. 

Too few people know this stuff. It is not taught. We hardly bother any more with this startling gift. Only the modern Bible translators understand just how potent is the material they are dealing with.   

Brave journalists were indispensable for freedom and good governance, and still are

The Bible written down for the first time in your mother tongue liberates your sense of yourself, your worth in the divine scheme of things.  Communities of different “others” are formed that rise above mere clan and tribe, and nations are founded and raised up to worship and prosper. 

Wherever the Bible is translated, this happens. And wherever the Bible goes, so go newspapers, because newspapers tell your story. They provide not just useful information, but they carry stories that promote justice, expose wrong-doing, celebrate the good, protect from malign intentions, and nowadays educate those who are going to vote in elections. They inform readers about the decisions of the rulers; and help us to call them to account. The first proper news journal in China in Cantonese was produced by London Missionary Society’s Richard Morrison in the early 1815. The first newspaper in Bengali was produced by Baptist William Carey’s associate John Clark Marshman at Serampore College. 

Heroes of journalism

Accountability journalism at its broadest origins began with Luther and the pamphleteers. Pamphleteering - short printed works that Europe’s new printshops could churn out in sufficient numbers to make a reliable living - in turn forms the bedrock of the later newspapers, the first of which began to appear in the late 1500s. 

Principles of journalism, such as “publish and be damned”, and the right to protect your sources, were laid down at the same time, and are honoured tenaciously to this very day. That’s because men suffered tortures and died horrific deaths for them. John Stubbs, who criticized Queen Elizabeth I in a pamphlet had his right hand cut off at the wrist. He immediately whipped off his hat with his left, and shouted “God save the Queen”. 

Another, a printer named John Twyn, was convicted of sedition in 1613 for printing a book arguing that citizens should call to account a king whose decrees violated biblical law. Twyn refused to divulge the name of the author. For so doing, he was publicly castrated while alive, and then beheaded. His body was cut into four pieces, each being nailed to one of the four city gates, as a warning to other printers and writers.   

Daniel Defoe, the father of modern journalism, who denounced the hypocrisy of the Church of England for banning dissenters from public office unless they went to church once a year, was put in the stocks for three days for seditious libel, and then imprisoned in Newgate.   

But the people who loved his campaigns, threw flowers instead of stones. And he founded a new newspaper in prison - paid for by the government! He went on to found long-form journalism, campaign for old people’s homes (“Protestant Monasteries”) and for a graduated tax system, among much else. 

William T. Stead, known incredibly as the “founder of the modern world”, exposed the Victorian white slave trade, where virgins could be deflowered to order by upper-class men all over Europe, chloroformed and raped in padded rooms before being thrown out onto the streets to certain ruin. He got the age of consent raised from 13 to 16 where it remains to this day. He was opposed not just by the posh, but given a prison sentence for his pains. Stead was the youngest editor in the country, at 22. He founded the tabloid investigative feature, cross-heads, illustrations, the Agony Aunt column – and the interventionist foreign policy we still have today. He told journalists to go into the slums to report on poverty, not as Christians, but as “Christs”. 

Brave journalists like this, prepared to sacrifice their lifestyle and their reputation – Defoe was bankrupted and imprisoned twice - were indispensable for freedom and good governance, and still are: think of the sex-grooming exposés of Andrew Norfolk of the Times after 16 years of collusion-by-silence by the police and local authorities. Or think of the Horizon Post Office software scandal which it took a TV play to bring to full light. 

The Fourth Estate - Edmund Burke’s name for the media of his day - is the nation’s watchdog, and it is too often now being muzzled. Google and secularisation are to blame.   

My book, Saving Journalism (Pippa Rann Books) challenges salty Christians to get back into the media mix, prepared to live and even die to comfort and safety, like the prophets we should be, to bring light to dark places.   

Sunday 27 October is the global day of prayer for the media. For more information visit christiansinmedia.co.uk

Saving Journalism: The Rise, Demise and Survival of the News by Dr Jenny Taylor (Pippa Rann Books) can be pre-ordered here