Why I resigned/ New York Times, Current

I'm still getting requests about why I left World. One-stop shopping: Here are 3 pieces to which I'll direct those interested. God is merciful: All 8 of us who left have found productive work.

First article, by Ben Smith, is from The New York Times on November 15, 2021. The second and third are by me: “A wrinkle in journalism history,” is from Current in September 2022, and “How we saved WORLD millions of dollars” is from Current in April 2023.

1. The New York Times

His Reasons for Opposing Trump Were Biblical. Now a Top Christian Editor Is Out.

A clash over culture and politics comes to World, a groundbreaking journalistic institution that covers evangelical Christians.

Marvin Olasky’s World magazine has delivered hard-hitting investigative articles under a journalistic philosophy he calls “biblical objectivity.”

By Ben Smith

When Marvin Olasky gets angry emails from readers — more often than not about an exposé of wrongdoing at an evangelical church, or about a story that reflects poorly on Donald Trump — he has a stock reply.

“We think this is useful to the Church,” he tells disgruntled readers, “because we are also sinners.”

As the longtime editor of World, a Christian news organization that has a website, a biweekly magazine and a set of podcasts, Mr. Olasky has delivered a mix of hard news and watchdog articles about the evangelical realm under a journalistic philosophy he calls “biblical objectivity.”

It involves taking strong stands where the Bible is clear, which has led World to oppose abortion rights and support refugees, he says, and to follow reportable facts where the Bible doesn’t provide clear guidance.

The concept served Mr. Olasky well from 1994, when he became the editor of World, until Nov. 1, 2021, when he submitted his resignation.

He had, he said, received an effective “vote of no confidence” from World’s board, which had recently started a section of the website, World Opinions, without fully consulting him. The new section offers opinion essays on religious issues with the kind of commentary on secular topics like mask mandates, inflation, race and President Biden’s spending plans that can be found on any number of other conservative websites.

At one level, Mr. Olasky’s departure is just another example of the American news media sinking deeper into polarization, as one more conservative news outlet, which had almost miraculously retained its independence, is conquered by Mr. Trump.

It also marks the end of a remarkable era at a publication that has shaken evangelical churches and related institutions with its deeply reported articles. The far-right writer Dinesh D’Souza resigned in 2012 as president of the King’s College after World reported that he had attended a Christian conference with “a woman not his wife.” In 2020, World reported that several young women had complained that a North Carolina Republican running for Congress, Madison Cawthorn, had exhibited “sexually or verbally aggressive behavior toward them when they were teenagers.” At a time when hot takes get the clicks, these articles offered something old-fashioned and hard for any community to take: accountability reporting.

“I am not interested in the project of a conservative opinion magazine — there are lots out there already and that’s not my vision of World,” Mr. Olasky, 71, told me Thursday in a telephone interview from his home in Austin, Texas.

The chief executive of God’s World Publications, World’s nonprofit parent, Kevin Martin, played down Mr. Olasky’s resignation, noting that the editor had previously said he’d be departing next summer anyway. He said he admired Mr. Olasky and his definition of biblical objectivity, and “we are not going to diverge from that, by God’s grace.”

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“I don’t see in any way that we are becoming more partisan or more Trumpy,” Mr. Martin said.

And its founder, Joel Belz, told me he believed Mr. Olasky’s departure was simply an episode of “painful growing pains.”

But many of World’s longtime journalists have sided with Mr. Olasky. A few longtime staff members have left over the last year, and a prominent board member, David Skeel, resigned.

One journalist whose departure particularly rattled the newsroom is Mindy Belz, a writer for four decades and Mr. Belz’s sister-in-law. She resigned in October, saying in an internal memo shared with me that World was “heading in new directions, some I don’t embrace and fear may compromise the hard reporting many of us have spent years cultivating.”

In her final column, Ms. Belz, who was also an editor, wrote of her discomfort “with the strife and stridency that’s befallen American evangelicalism, and with some directions World News Group is charting.”

World was founded in 1986, after Mr. Belz became frustrated that the evangelical world was relying on the secular press to expose wrongdoing within its community, notably the evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who were accused of misusing church money.

World’s business operation is in Asheville, N.C., but its journalists were working remotely since long before Covid-19. In 1994, Mr. Belz handed the editorial reins to Mr. Olasky, a slender, Yale-educated convert to Christianity who quickly became a pillar of Christian journalism. He educates reporters at the World Journalism Institute, where he is dean, schooling them in World’s motto: “Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth.” For a time he was also a leading voice in Republican policy: An occasional adviser to George W. Bush in his time as Texas governor, Mr. Olasky helped popularize the term “compassionate conservatism,” a pillar of Mr. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.

The wave of troubles at World started four presidential campaigns later, when World at first seemed to reflect white evangelical leaders’ skepticism about Mr. Trump’s personal morality, and World’s polls of Christian leaders were widely cited as supporting the idea that Mr. Trump would have a problem with Christian voters.

By the general election, it was clear that, whatever leaders thought, Mr. Trump was popular in the pews. And so when World’s editors, in October 2016, declared Mr. Trump “unfit for power” on its cover because of his remarks about grabbing women, and demanded that he step aside, Mr. Olasky received about 2,000 emails, he said, about 80 percent of them disagreeing. (In a column two days later, Mr. Olasky also suggested that Hillary Clinton step aside for her “lies” and policy errors.)

“That was a very painful time for us because it divided our staff as we had never been divided,” Mr. Belz said.

Joel Belz founded World in 1986, after he became frustrated that the evangelical world was relying on the secular press to expose wrongdoing within its community. Montinique Monroe for The New York Times

The board was furious — though Mr. Martin said it was not because of the substance of the column, but because Mr. Olasky had presumed that he could speak for the entire institution.

“Before Marvin’s cover story in 2016, I always felt we could easily navigate any differences we might have on political or theological issues, given our shared Christian faith,” the board member who resigned, Mr. Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told me in an email. “But views seemed to harden and become increasingly entrenched after that.” Mr. Skeel said he left after having “come to believe that World was moving away from its original mission and that I was no longer in step with the rest of the board.”

And since 2016, many conservative evangelical leaders have gotten behind Mr. Trump. An emblematic one is Albert Mohler, a former World board member who is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He wrote in 2016 that Mr. Trump was “the Great Evangelical Embarrassment,” but in 2020 executed a complicated about-face, announcing that he would vote for Mr. Trump because Democrats are “antagonistic to biblical Christianity” on issues like abortion and transgender rights.

Secular culture wars roiled World in the summer of 2020 over a podcast whose guest sharply criticized the protests after George Floyd’s killing; Mr. Olasky pressed to include a more liberal view. More recently, Mr. Olasky said he faced criticism from readers for running articles by a doctor recommending masks and vaccines to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Ms. Belz said she had felt growing pressure on two topics in particular: “on issues that related to masks or to voter fraud.”

There have also been tensions over World’s coverage of Republicans, particularly a piece in August 2020 by the reporter Harvest Prude about the allegations against Mr. Cawthorn, who won election to Congress.

The company’s chief content officer, Nick Eicher, criticized the article, and Mr. Olasky defended it. Mr. Martin said that Mr. Eicher’s objection was that he “thought the story was weak.” Mr. Eicher declined in an email to comment further.

Still, Mr. Olasky believed the tensions were manageable. “I thought things would go on this way and I would just be able to retire peacefully next year,” he said.

The last straw came when he learned in September that Mr. Eicher and Mr. Mohler, the board member and seminary president, planned to start World Opinions in the coming weeks.

“That’s when I realized this wasn’t going to work,” he said. “I realized we were really coming from different vantage points.”

World remains in an unusually strong position in a fast-changing media landscape, with a niche all its own and more than $11 million in revenue in 2019, according to publicly available tax forms. And while the future of World’s newsroom is unclear, much of its online real estate is devoted to the new opinion section.

Its editor is Mr. Mohler, who opened it with a promise to join “the battle of ideas” and delivered a searing attack on President Biden’s Build Back Better bill.

Mr. Olasky’s recent work shows a deep concern about where this is all headed. In a recent column, he deplored the “Flight 93” approach — a reference to the hijacked flight on 9/11 where passengers banded together to storm the cockpit — that he sees among many conservatives, who, he says, believe they must use any means necessary to keep America from being destroyed by liberals.

“Some on both political sides now say: We’re heading toward social Armageddon. We are two nations. It’s them or us,” he wrote in October. “And yet, many on both sides still share the hope of the Pledge of Allegiance: ‘one nation under God.’ I’m on the one-nation team.”

Mr. Olasky said he was grateful for his long run. He plans to stick around until the end of January, to complete the magazine’s annual Roe v. Wade issue.

PART TWO: CURRENT, SEPT. 14, 2022

A WRINKLE IN JOURNALISM HISTORY

By Marvin Olasky

The former editor of World has a story tell—and a warning to offer

My one It’s a Wonderful Life moment came thirty years ago. World, then a six-year-old news magazine from a Christian perspective, had just lost a half-million dollars. It survived on borrowed money and the sweat of two brothers from Iowa, Joel and Nat Belz. At a board meeting of God’s World Publications, two of my fellow directors wanted to stop publishing. I pleaded: “Don’t shut it down.” Referring to the Bailey brothers in the classic movie, I said “the Belz Brothers Building and Loan is the most important innovation in Christian journalism in 150 years.”

I was teaching journalism history at The University of Texas at Austin and could attest to that. In 1840 three-fourths of the newspaper and magazine editors in the U.S. professed Christian faith, but they lost their audience when they forgot to emphasize reporting. They started offering Christian Opinion—largely warmed-over sermons—instead of pounding the pavement to report the news. They moved from street-level to suite-level and gave way to editors at other publications who emphasized fact-based stories instead of preaching.

In 1992 the board of directors gave World a stay of execution on one condition: I had to become an editor and impart to all writers this emphasis on reporting rather than opining. I did, and World’s reporting gained it an audience: Subscriptions during the 1990s jumped from 10,000 to 100,000. In the new century World added an active website and a podcast. World became significant in American public life because it affected the thinking of one million evangelicals, a critical group. As donations increased, the publication brought in $10 million annually and ambitions grew: What if World became a $100 million enterprise?

For thirty years World had what for journalists is a holy grail: editorial independence. This meant that the board, advertisers, subscribers, and (as contributions made up a larger piece of the budget) donors never dictated what we covered and how we covered it. From 1992 through 2020 World averaged eight investigative stories a year, some about activities by Christians. In the process we at one time or another upset leaders ranging from James Dobson and Pat Robertson to Newt Gingrich and Chuck Colson.

Some of those stories cost us. A 1997 exposé of a major advertiser, the Christian publisher Zondervan, led to the company pulling its ads for years. World earned among Christians a reputation for independence—and that led to trust. Even secular organizations like The New York Times noticed World’s “deeply reported articles” and concluded, “At a time when hot takes get the clicks, these articles offered something old-fashioned and hard for any community to take: accountability reporting.”

But times change and journalism has changed. Journalist Joshua Benton on NiemanLab, a website devoted to the news business, recently detailed the decline of Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, and especially, Forbes. The article—“An Incomplete History of Forbes.com as a Platform for Scams, Grift, and Bad Journalism”—explained how the once-respected business magazine tried to revive itself by opening up Forbes.com to contributors whose work was full of conflicts of interest. Forbes made money and became “known as the best way to disguise PR as news.”

In a click-bait, hot-take media environment, World’s brand of slow-cooked stories was expensive and increasingly out of sync. We didn’t focus on politics or issues animating a tribe. Instead we let ourselves be guided by the Bible verse that Joel Belz chose to describe our beat: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and all who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).

Our remit was broad. We weren’t Church World or Culture-War World or Conservative World. World was conservative on some issues but also ran stories about would-be immigrants and refugees, about the vulnerability of mentally-ill homeless people, about abused women and other “uns,” including the unborn, the undocumented, the unemployed, and the uneducated. We sometimes covered things just because they were fun or interesting, like chess championships.

In 2021, though, World’s board decided things had to change. Politics was part of it. Half a century ago Timothy Crouse wrote the seminal account of pack journalism, The Boys on the Bus. He described reporters clustered around R. W. “Johnny” Apple, lead political writer of The New York Times, asking, “Johnny, what’s our lead?” They knew their editors read the Times and would compare what they wrote with what Apple wrote: If their take was different, editors would lose confidence.

In our day, Tucker Carlson plays the Johnny Apple role among conservatives. When World didn’t cover issues that agitated him, some readers, board members, and business-side folks thought we were becoming liberal. Failure to focus on Hunter Biden’s laptop just before the 2020 election, or “stolen election” conspiracies after it, meant we had veered off course.

When “critical race theory” became a conservative bugaboo, World let St. Louis Black pastor Michael Byrd have the last word in a story about the evangelical political divide: “Helping his church members deal with crime, dysfunction, and poverty causes him to roll his eyes when he hears fellow evangelicals arguing about critical race theory . . .  The night before, his cousin was shot dead. During dinner, his iPhone kept buzzing with messages from church members. One person’s uncle just died. Another person’s family member was just hospitalized. ‘Why in the world will CRT be a hot-button topic for me, when my family’s hurting over here?’”  

Such coverage offended those who considered CRT an existential threat and did not like being challenged to consider another Christian perspective.

As I began editing World thirty years ago I was proposing policies regarding poverty-fighting and related issues that became known as “compassionate conservativism.” The magazine reflected that viewpoint. Today, “national conservatism” or “Christian nationalism” has little room for compassion. As World resisted paranoid lines regarding vaccines, masks, and church closings—all part of a big government plot—our resistance became part of a larger conspiracy theory: World had gone woke. 

American journalism history has valuable lessons on how to deal with conspiracy mongers. In 1955 wealthy William F. Buckley, Jr. started a magazine, National Review, that invigorated a conservative movement in disarray. Within a few years Buckley as editor had to fight off the John Birch Society, which asserted—among other oddities—that President Dwight Eisenhower was a Communist. Buckley said Birch founder and head Robert Welch inferred “subjective intention from objective consequences”: Because bad things had happened, U.S. policy makers must have intended them to happen.

John Birchers scrutinized book-buying decisions by local librarians and demanded that some books be removed. When National Review opposed the Birch campaign to impeach Earl Warren, the Supreme Court’s chief justice, many subscribers complained. When one donor said he had supported National Review financially and wanted it to support his concerns, Buckley said the magazine was “not for sale.”

Buckley owned the magazine and maintained his emphasis on independence even when the business side, led by publisher Bill Rusher, worried about reader and revenue loss. Rusher said a “substantial fraction” of readers “bled away” during 1962 and 1963. A direct mail campaign flopped as many on the mailing lists sided with the Birchers.

Buckley stuck with his principles and wrote to Barry Goldwater, “It is essential that we effect a clean break” with the Birch Society. Buckley did so in 1965 when he wrote about the Birchers’ “paranoid and unpatriotic drivel.” Buckley biographer Alvin Feizenberg wrote in 2017 that “an avalanche of protest followed.” According to Buckley, only two of the 200 letters he read agreed with him that Robert Welch’s claims were “excessive,” and only two staff members agreed with him on the need to break with the Birchers. Nevertheless, Buckley persevered and National Reviewsurvived.

World’s history paralleled National Review’s, to a point—but unlike Buckley, the Belz brothers did not own World: A nonprofit with a board of directors has the final say. The board in the 1990s embraced the business/editorial wall of separation. But those were the Clinton years: Our editorial position that Clinton wasn’t fit to be president caused no waves. Not so in 2016 when we said the same thing about Donald Trump. That cover story had the potential to hurt the GOP. It angered our politically conservative board.

The board in 2021 did not pass a formal resolution removing the wall of separation, but it did take actions that had that effect. It approved a new product, World Opinions, and devoted a million dollars to making it work. The editorial team had no part in designing World Ops or in choosing contributors. It had no authority to reject columns, to vet them for conflicts of interest, or to strip them of hyperbole. 

It became clear that many World Ops columnists would not proceed with the skepticism that underlay traditional journalism. Many wouldn’t do on-the-ground reporting. Some brought with them all kinds of entangling alliances. World Ops promised to speak authoritatively on questions where the Bible allows differences of opinion. Publicity surrounding World Ops stressed the values of the new World order: “Unquestionably conservative . . . trustworthy . . . authoritative . . . unapologetic.”

Last year I asked World executives and board leaders many questions about how World Ops came into being and what makes it Christian: Does “Biblical” equal “conservative”? What does “conservative” mean in an autocratic era? But the board did answer one question unambiguously: Who’s in charge of editorial? Board leaders told me the CEO is now “the quarterback” or “the general.”

Eight months into 2022, I miss the old World that lived by the slogan, “Sensational facts, understated prose.” World Opinions columns toss hand grenades at “the elites” or “the cartel” or “the regime.” A few columns are good, but all too common they are blasts at “the hypocrisy of our ruling class” with sentences like this one: “The champions of social justice, equality, fairness, and feminism contradict each with the self-deluded lies they peddle to those who they believe will listen with supple attention.” Oh.

Sadly, the magazine and website now appear afraid to offend the right. World in 2020 and 2021 ran two dozen articles that emphasized the importance of vaccination while puncturing claims for Ivermectin and other supposed remedies. This year, story after story on vaccination has played to the anti-vaccine prejudice rampant among many evangelicals: “Challenges to military vaccine mandates mount,” “Thousands of protesters vent frustration with government, COVID-19 restrictions,” “Vaccine maker secretly dumped contaminated doses,” etc., etc.

In 2020 one of our reporters learned that Madison Cawthorn, a young Republican running for Congress from western North Carolina on a faith and family platform, had a history of harassing female students during his time at Patrick Henry College. That was a classic World story and we ran it, but The New York Times last November reported that a World business executive criticized it. This year from March 22 to May 17 the Washington Examiner ran forty stories on Cawthorn’s claims about Washington orgies and cocaine use, photos of him in lingerie, airport gun charges, etc. During that two-month period World covered none of Cawthorn’s dubious deeds and had a total of two sentences about him, one on his introducing legislation to stop sending aid to Ukraine, the other citing Trump’s endorsement of him.

Maybe the omissions were accidental, but when the wall of separation comes down, suspicion grows: Did World skip a story that would have disturbed donors? As editor I almost never knew whether a letter-writer was a big donor, and I didn’t want to know. But when the CEO (who has such knowledge) is quarterback, a publication needs to be transparent about donors and pressures they might apply. World’s two top business executives now sit on an editorial council that decides policy concerns. That opens the door for questions about pay-to-play and editorial favoritism based on donor desires.

Personal sadness aside, I try to view World’s shakeup through the lens of a journalism history professor. During the years before the Civil War, many newspapers north and south claimed the sky was falling and any who disagreed with dire predictions were varmints. As one Mississippi resident noted, “When a scheme is put on foot the [Jackson] Mississippian roars and all the little county papers yelp, the crossroad and barroom politicians take it up and so it goes, and if anyone opposes them they raise the cry of abolitionist and traitor.”

During the past two years a variety of polls emanating from Harvard, Georgetown, the University of Virginia, Zogby, and others show a third to a half of Americans thinking we’re heading toward civil war. America is a crowded theater and outlets like World Opinions that shout “fire” may cause panic.

One more nineteenth century lowlight: Many Christian publications died because they stopped reporting, accentuated opining, and left readers bored. Many World readers have told me they subscribed because the magazine always included something that surprised them. The magazine’s senior editors and reporters have all moved on to The Dispatch, Christianity Today, or other organizations, but younger reporters I’ve trained are still there. I hope they will have running room. I hope World has more surprises in store, including the most important one: that amid wars, famines, and senseless shootings, God is still at work.

PART THREE. CURRENT. APRIL 29, 2023

HOW WE SAVED WORLD MILLIONS OF DOLLARS

by Marvin Olasky |

There are important lessons for conservative media in the massive Dominion/Fox settlement. Is anyone listening?

One lesson to conservative media from the Fox News payment of $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems: Don’t panic when some of your customers head to outlets further to the right.

E-mails in the Dominion case showed how Fox News execs in 2020 and 2021 worried about the “troubling” surge of viewers to smaller but nuttier Newsmax. The untold story: Fox was not alone in the desire to outbid an extremist organization in the race for eyeballs.

World magazine also heard behind it the footsteps of a rising force on the far right, The Epoch Times. In December 2020, as World editor-in-chief, I received emails like this one from a clinical psychologist: “I earnestly believe that Trump received about 80 million votes and won in a relative landslide. Communist conspirators effectively coordinated a coup through digital and conventional fraud.... You have an obligation to take this on.... The upstart Epoch Times has covered this fraud extensively.”

This subscriber approved of the Dec. 14 Epoch Times proposal that Donald Trump “arrest those who have conspired to deprive people of their rights through election fraud.” He wanted Trump to use the army to enforce his will. I wrote him back, “Looking for a civil war?” He responded, “Clearly the Dem strategy is to render null and void all future elections, just as leftists have done in Russia, Venezuela, and elsewhere.”

That’s not clear, but why do millions of people think it is? Why, to retain some of those people and gain the allegiance of others, did the World business side decide to transform a publication that for the first time in years was financially strong? I’ll get to those questions, but I’m also asking an underlying question: Whatever happened to the Christian understanding of common grace?

Charles Hodge and Louis Berkhof are the authors of two classics entitled Systematic Theology that I read soon after becoming a Christian almost 50 years ago. Hodge wrote of “a divine influence of the Spirit granted to all men.” He said both the Bible and experience show that “common grace” brings about whatever “decorum, order, refinement, and virtue exists among men.” Berkhof said “common grace” means that “sinful man still retains some knowledge of God, of natural things, and of the difference between good and evil, and shows some regard for virtue and for good outward behavior.”

These professors understood that Christians and non-Christians have different eternal destinies, but that all can and often do contribute to human societies. Instead of concentrating solely on the negatives among those who don’t know Jesus, let’s acknowledge that sometimes they do good things. Remember Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s oft-quoted admonition that the line of good and evil runs through every human heart? That means Christians are not free of sin and non-Christians even in their unbelief also have knowledge to offer.

Christian journalists who relish common grace should not turn humans we cover into two-dimensional cartoons, even though such depictions may gain us more “likes” and “follows.” Common grace means we should not consider non-Christians as guilty until proven innocent. Common grace also means we should not expect every election to be rigged. Despite gargantuan efforts and small errors here or there, no one has shown evidence that would have overturned the results of the 2020 presidential election in even a single state.

Nevertheless, the Epoch Times from Oct. 7, 2020, to Jan. 6, 2021, ran 136 articles containing the words “stolen election.” Pre-election stories included: “Trump Calls for Resistance to Blanket Mail-In Voting, Cites Fraud Concerns” and “Experts: Mail-In Balloting May Deliver Fraudulent Votes.” Post-election stories offered a state-by-state drumbeat: “Nevada Voter Says Family and Friends Are ‘Outraged’ With Election.... Georgia Voter Says Americans Can’t Accept This False Election Narrative.... Ohio Voter Sees ‘Blatant Injustice’ in System.... Delaware Voter Denounces Election Fraud .... Missouri Voter Believes Legal Recount Would Be a ‘Landslide’ for Trump.... California Voter Says Election Was Run With ‘Lawlessness.’”

Epoch Times election headlines had three major themes. First, the 2020 election was “A Battle Between Good and Evil.... This Is a Spiritual Battle.” Second, the 2020 election was a Flight 93, rush-the-cockpit-or- die situation, with no second chances: “Pennsylvania Voter Says If Election Is Stolen, ‘It Will Be the Last Election’.... First Time Voter Says America Faces Renewal or Destruction.... Election Protester: ‘This Is the End of Our Republic If We Do Not Fight’.... Trump Says He’s Fighting for ‘All Future Elections.’” Third, either politicians or God will bring victory: “Legislatures in Swing States Will Switch Electors to Trump.... ‘All of This Is Gonna Be Turned Around by God’s Power.’” That’s because of “Overwhelming Evidence of Outcome-Altering Voting Irregularities.”

At World, we didn’t see the evidence as overwhelming or even whelming. We used the term “stolen election” not 136 times but six times, in the context of looking hard for “specific, credible evidence.” On November 13, 2020, senior reporter Emily Belz noted several small voting errors and concluded that “instances of voter fraud or mistakes so far don’t amount to numbers big enough to change the projected outcome in several states Trump would need to flip in order to win.” She quoted Michael Adams, the Republican secretary of state for Kentucky, saying widespread fraud is “just not feasible,” along with data analysis from Stanford University: With millions of votes coming in from counties across the country, “an absence of any irregularities would in and of itself be irregular.”

Emily analyzed some popular stories and social media posts and one by one explained why they did not hold up. In light of the Dominion case against Fox News, here’s Emily’s analysis of one snafu: “Dominion provided the voting equipment in Antrim County, Mich., which initially showed Biden as winning, then flipped to Trump after canvassers reviewed the numbers. Michigan officials said that was human

error from the county clerk uploading Antrim’s results. The Dominion machines correctly tabulated the votes, but a Michigan company called ElectionSource provided the election software, which the secretary of state said the clerk should have updated before uploading results.”

Emily included in her article a reminder— “A swirl of information on social media deserves careful sifting, as Exodus 23 reminds us: ‘You shall not spread a false report.’” World followed that command and did not face a lawsuit. World also reported on December 2 that “One month after the general election, the Department of Justice has not found evidence of widespread voter fraud.” A long World website story in January went through dozens of accusations and found no reason to overturn the election.

This coverage did not satisfy some World subscribers. Early in 2021 one wrote that she canceled her subscription and started reading The Epoch Times: “Their motto is ‘Truth and Tradition’ and they definitely are all-in on the tradition side. Every time I read it, I come across something uplifting. It is a newspaper that I am more than happy for my children to read.”

Another subscriber wrote, “I have switched to Epoch Times where
the news and opinions are insightful, timely and relevant.” A third wrote, “Desperate for balanced, thorough, and reliable news, we started taking The Epoch Times.... Our family struggles in the current environment of depravity, dishonesty, and growing hostility to keep our eyes lifted and our hearts encouraged. Epoch is working to fill that need.”

Aware that the business side was feeling the heat, I wrote in January 2021 to World News Group CEO Kevin Martin, “We have a unique niche in the media market that I think will serve us well long term, but in the short run it’s not as remunerative as conspiracy-centric organs like
The Epoch Times.” I was glad to receive Martin’s reply: “There are a lot of ways to make some quick money in media, especially if we’re willing to sell our souls. Let’s not. I think we’re in the right place. Many Christians will get tired of being anxious and angry all the time, and WORLD will be here for them.”

An email to me in March from a World News Group fundraiser had the headline “Major donor concern.” It said two big contributors “are dissatisfied with WORLD’s coverage of alternative stories on voter fraud... they have turned to The Epoch Times.” (Others were probably also dissatisfied, but I had for years told fundraisers not to give me special alerts like that: I didn’t want to prioritize the concerns of the rich over those of the poor.)

I wrote to Martin, “We’ve tried to respect our readers by emphasizing Biblical objectivity, which has some overlap with contemporary conservatism but challenges parts of it....I’ve read several complaints from readers who are switching to The Epoch Times. I’ve assured reporters that we’re not going that way, but I want to make sure my assurances are accurate.”

Martin replied, “I have heard from some of the readers you may have heard from who are looking for alternatives to WORLD. I hope they don’t go to The Epoch Times–that would be a sad outcome–but I would prefer that they not leave WORLD at all.” His next sentence could be interpreted in different ways: “I hope we will continue toward giving our readers and listeners (and viewers) the answers they are looking for, so they don’t find bad answers in other outlets.”

At Fox News, White House reporter Kristin Fisher was skeptical about “stolen election” claims. Her deposition in the Dominion case reported that her boss, Bryan Boughton, “expressed his great unhappiness with my live shot. He emphasized that higher-ups at Fox News were also unhappy with it. And he told me that I needed to do a better job of respect — this is a quote — ‘respecting our audience.’”

An attorney questioned Fisher: “Was it your understanding that you had done something that was disrespectful of Fox’s audience?” Fisher responded, “No. I believed that I was respecting our audience by telling them the truth.” Fox CEO Suzanne Scott complained about Fisher’s “indifference to the audience. We need to manage this.... I can’t keep defending these reporters who don’t understand our viewers or how to handle stories.” Fisher told a colleague, “I’m 100 percent being muzzled.” She resigned: “I couldn’t defend my employer to my daughter while trying to teach her to do what is right.”

World CEO Martin was also concerned about audience. World managing editor Angela Lu Fulton pleaded in an email to him that we strive to reach “the whole of the U.S. church (not just the white conservative subset).” Martin responded, “Our mostly white, mostly conservative audience is what God has given us. I am burdened to care for that audience properly, while hoping God brings others to us.” From October 2021 to early 2022., all eight of World magazine’s senior editors and writers resigned.

The World experience, like Fox’s, showed how hard it is to do street-level reporting in today’s political climate. Many people want their ears tickled and will only believe stories that conform to their biases. But here’s where the reality of common grace can kick in—if we actually pay attention to people unlike ourselves instead of sitting in offices cranking out opinions. “Respecting” the audience should mean telling the truth.

I’ll conclude with the experiences of a reporter for the liberal Washington Post and a conservative writer. The Post reporter, Walt Harrington, journeyed to Mobile, Alabama, to profile the Websters, a fundamentalist family attempting to ban “secular humanist” public school textbooks: Obviously, they were the enemy. Harrington went to their home and, not sure how to begin a combat interview, asked for a tour of the house. He saw it was “full of tacky teddy bears and knickknacks.” Harrington thought the Websters were not only bad people but had bad taste.

Then Mrs. Webster agreed about the tackiness and explained each item. One came from a 13-year-old pregnant girl kicked out by her mom. Another came from an 84-year-old woman in a wheelchair who got to swim when Mr. Webster picked her up and carried her to the pool. Other knickknacks had similar stories. Harrington wrote that he had gone to Mobile to find out “What kind of family would bring a lawsuit to get books banned in America? It turned out that the answer was a lovely family.” Because of common grace, Harrington could recognize goodness in the Websters.

Common grace also works the other way: Conservatives who keep liberal Twitter warriors at a digital arm’s length may find that telephone phone conversations amid crisis lead to friendship. Nancy French in December 2021 described how she helped a Jewish, disabled political opponent unable to get groceries amid New York City’s COVID lockdown. They eventually prayed together over the phone. The food chain started moving again. Their friendship continued.

Belief in Christ is a special grace that God in His mysterious ways sometimes bestows and sometimes does not. Common grace seems widely available. We do God (and ourselves) a disservice when we don’t relish that mercy. We should remember that Jesus loves people who were out to lynch him. (I was one of them.) Jesus died forgiving his enemies. When we beat up non-Christians physically, or with flying fingers over computer keys, we disgrace Him. We need to leave our offices and see how common grace works.

Marvin Olasky is former editor-in-chief at World magazine and is now a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute and an Acton Institute affiliate scholar. He writes a weekly column on homelessness for the Fix Homelessness website and a monthly Olasky Books newsletter.