as we encourage you to to fund share on social media about today's program to help us spread the word we are streaming it on twitter and youtube so you can find it on the heritage speed on both of those channels and platforms. to introduce our guest today, marvin lasky is a prolific writer and an accomplished editor. we're proud to welcome him back to the heritage foundation where he is a former visiting fellow and somebody who's a) of our organization area author of more than 25 books including his latest, reforming journalism which he will discuss with us today. martin's political journey is quite unique. as he became an atheist and a marxist in high school and went on to join the communist party in the early 1970s area it was, he was at the university of michigan where he and his phd and he had a spiritual awakening and was baptized into the presbyterian church in 1976. he later became the founder of redeemer presbyterian church in austin texas in 1992 area college, he taught journalism or 25 years at the university of texas at austin and became a reporter for the dale yale daily news and the boston globe. his first book garnered him significant attention and caught the eye of the bradley foundationsupported his visiting fellowship at the heritage foundation for two years . one of his most well-known works is the tragedy of american compassion which transformed him into a reader in the christian conservative political thought movement, newt gingrich, speaker of the house distributed to every republican member of the house at the time . it's also what inspired the phrase compassionate conservative and . martin was instrumental in the success of the world journalism institute which he he is the dean of and he's ceased to recruit and train christian journalists and inject them into the mainstream media and we certainly do need that. he's the editor-in-chiefof the world which is a news organization that reports from a christian worldview . all him on twitter at marvin olasky. his most recent book is titled "reforming journalism" and it's been described as a faith field filled history of journalism and includes tips on newswriting and advice on advocating conservative convictions in mediums dominated by the left . as somebody who went to journalism school myself and spent time as a reporter and editor in washington i've enjoyed reading it and i highly recommend it to you . we have copies for sale as you leave the auditorium in the lobby. now to tell us more about "reforming journalism" i'd like to welcome marvin olasky . [applause] >> thank you rob, thank you for coming today. it's great tobe back at heritage . we spent the most productive research year of my life here in 1989, 1990. this building was the base for my trips to the library of congress five blocks away and it was fun. literally blowing the dust off 19th-century records in the stacks of the library and my research turned into the tragedy of american compassion. people say it made a difference in the drive for welfare reform and i'd like to think that change several million people who from the welfare world into productive work. so i'm grateful to heritage for that contribution to fighting poverty in america area a friend of mine was the head of aei once said he got barack obama's job to drop when arthur told him on the conservative because i care about helping the poor and the great president king james could say the same. so i am grateful to heritage for that year here with the neff area's background that rob referred to. back in the 1970s i thought i was pretty smart and had high sat scores, a yale diploma, a work in big-time journalism. i was basically a left-wing protester invited into the halls of power and i was so smart that i didn't one of the stupidest things anyone could do, i joined the commonest party and then you really, really purely through god's grace i came out of it and in retrospect there was a official experience for me, not sure for others but for me it was because it made me realize really how stupid i am. and that's an important thing i think for all of us to come to mind area it helped me understand other people, also considered smart are also stupid. i started wondering about where i can go to find true wisdom . i became ethical of existential subjectivity and the lack of humility that typifies journalism and typifies me as well if i'm not careful. and that brings me to today's subject. in september steve bannon, the former truncated folk to a conservative group in st. louis and asked do you think it's been unpleasant nasty today, you haven't seen anything. the 20/20 campaign will go down as the most vitriolic and nastiest in american history . it's simple we win, we save the country. well, no, we do not. we do not win, we do not save thecountry if we win by escalating anger . whether on the left or the right who wins by that sword will eventually die by it. and just a little history since this is what was buddy, the united states has been exceptional. i know there's debate about that of all the revolutions i study the american revolution is the only one that did not become disastrous area revolutions in france, russia which i became familiar with in my communist days, china, cuba, they all started with ideals that quickly became idols and that could happen here. not, probably not in the next decade but could happen. i visited argentina last month with its inflation, that could happen here. we could become even like venezuela where class warfare has worked all classes and journalism based in betrayal is now part of the problem so if we keep escalating our cultural dk, our eventual debt driven national bankruptcy, we believe more people to go from fierce words to sticks and stones . the old objectivity never was all that good, it certainly doesn't worknow . are there alternatives? i'd like to lay out suggestions based in biblical teaching that might help us make journalism part of the solution rather than part of the problem and i do want to stress these suggestions grow out of my work at world. when i was at heritage i walked over to the station and met with joel bell who founded world in 1986, joined the board of directors in 1990 and started editing in 1992 and i did that because the board of directors knew they could kick me off the board and just be more active perhaps in other types of mischief but we have grown at a time when other journalists began to prize different earnings so these are not just theoretical constructs. we've road tested them over the years and we've learned they work so number one, do journalism at street level, not sweet level everyone has opinions . it's easy to set at our computers and in air-conditioned offices and pontificate. the world we have tried to emphasize is really tough, time-consuming street-level reporting. we like being flies on the wall, watching and listening area we don't want to make ourselves the center of attention and don't want to make ourselves the apparent font of wisdom. we'd like to go out and report and reporting has fallen into rare circumstances these days. there's so much opinion journalism there is very little reporting, people listening, watching, describing red as number one. number one, sprinkle salt, not sugar. some of you here may work in corporate public relations department, i did that for five years area some of you are in nonprofit offices or congressional suites. we've had experience there and i know that the job for people in that situationis to make your organization or your boss look good . i did some of that. i worked at dupont for five years. it was great educationally and financially but the task really was to hand out sugar. sweet statements that sometimes covered up the truth. at not good journalism. and sometimes people are forgetting the divide between good journalism and actually going out and trying to honestly report what's going on without doing it in a way that's designed to popularize, publicize particular groups or organizations or individuals. and sugar isn't very helpful either, just gives us sugar fixes and these sweet statements cover up the truth . it's not good journalism in the world that we try to solve. salt and faith, it's also a preservative and it's our goal and that makes us unpopular in certain quarters including times conservative because three, we try to avoid entangling the lines. we can be not sugar because we don't have trackbacks of other organizations. even when a scratch hours. world, yes. i am i hope a christian first, a conservative second but i am a conservative. world largely can be the same way but it's not part of the conservative movement. we are not part of the evangelical movement either. we can and do besides other groups. more than 23 years ago, the world was a member of the evangelical pressassociation , we learned that epa code of ethics prohibiting criticism of other apa members. that made a neutral protection society sometimes organizations, our organizations sometimes are. we resign from the epa, we tried to avoid entanglement ever since so independent is important. number four, we'd like to publish sensational facts, but he tried to use understatedpros . much of journalism has become like movie franchises area scream one, scream two, scream three. people get paid clicks create click base. that's not healthy for consumers or producers we do have lots of sensational news in a world we tried to tell not screen it and that's also a different from a lot of journalism these days. number five, try to remember the theologicalreason for not screaming . the sky is not falling. because god holds up the sky. we had a flood a long time ago. i promise not to send another one. this year, the 75th year since we invented nuclear bombs and use two of them on japan. it is absolutely miraculous that during decades of cold war we did not have a nuclear war area there are times we came close. i'm not aware of any time in human history that a massively effective new weapon hasn't been used for such a long time area and that's amazing. it's not natural, it's almost supernatural and when i think of this i really am filled with thanksgiving and you should be too. god is so grateful we can't get our arms around him and he's clearly had his arms around us. 500 years ago john calvin about how we got to be on god works so that we may be restored by his goodness. the rotten stuff that goes on, bill amazingly we haven't had the disaster that i think anyone would have predicted we would have had by now. i look at predictions back in the first decade of the century and people have carpeting that there would be nuclear bombs smuggle in people even getting off, better than 50 percent that we would have a nuclear incident in this country sometime in the next five or 10 years that hasn't happened and i guess keep praying have happen area they keep working to keeping us from killing each other. my apologies for preaching, did i hear and amen anyone mark 's six, now that i've moved into theology let me waiting for some deeper waters. you may know the truth about bob dylan, you're going to have to serve somebody . release direct all reporting and writing. sometimes a very implicit way, sometimes explicitly not even the simplest story is without some degree of positional censoring. when firefighters fight fire, we cheer for the firefighters, not fire . when we have discoveries that people fight cancer, we are glad of those not sharing these days a lot of people think that stuff that used to be popular is actually social cancer of some kind of where not cheering for the social camp. all reporting in some ways directly reported. and in the 20th century, some journalists push back against what used to be called objectivity. and some still argue that an objective reporting recorder can function like a camera with people increasingly understood we certainly did, people in journalism did what camera shows depends onwhere we pointed . what kind of lens until we have, so on to update the metaphor, youare more than your smartphone . your smartphone reports, depends on where you're standing and when you turn it off, you decide what sounds to keep or show or play back area when we are covering stories, reporters decide what's most important and what to ignore. beliefs, judgments, ideologies direct those decisions. so what does that mean? does that mean it was everybody's opinion, not exactly. and feature stories, the choice of the protagonist and antagonist, they call this camel when we're running out of journalism institute area these stories have protagonists, antagonists, mission obstacles but the basic structure is someone does something because, but and then you have the tension that comes in and reporters decide who that someone is, what the bug representative worldviews are important and again i stress that because it leads to almost sometimes people pulling up their hands we don't happen rational objectivity doesn't work then it also . point number seven. mission statement, we try to provide biblically objective journalism informs, educate and inspire. the biblical objectivity. so different from the conventional notion of objectivity that some people have a hard time getting their arms around it and i'll try to explain . 420 three years now, i've owned and mostly lived in a full house on a hillside in texas. accepting texas it's called edwards mountain. the hill. the house sways slightly when heavy winds hit and then initially made me nervous, you have the top floor and you feel some movement, but the build of the house moved next door so i could actually ask them about the construction and he showed me it was solid and had some solid down here . he knew how the house was made to riyadh because he had made it area journalists conventionally throughout the 20th century and still these days sometimes described objectivity is getting opinions 80 and see and quoting them equally . but say my neighbor down the street says my house will fall down if the wind gets to 10 miles per hour and maybe a neighbor across the street says well, it's made of kryptonite and it would reject an attack even by superman. and it may be a third neighbor on the other side says my house is made of cheese, it will fall apart in an hurricane but don't worry because i can eat my way out of it . if i put all their opinions equally , will have an objective story -mark know. even if they were all experts and not slightly nutty, and i'm speaking generically, not of my particular neighbors, i would not have an objectively accurate story because they don't know my house the way our gardener knows the house so a balance subjectivity does not give us an objective answer. what does? god is the builder ofthe house we all live in. he gave us the bible which explains how the house was made and what it's made of . i believe that only god knows the true objective nature of things and i didn't always believe this, i had to learn it through hard things that were hard but useful. i believe that his book the bible is the only objective and accurate view of the world. which means the only true objectivity is biblical objectivity. do i expect others to believe that? probably not unless god impresses that in the way he impresses it on me all these years ago. and happily does that for millions of people. why he doesn't do it for everyone i don't know, that's the way it is. if any of you have seen the way of the wonderful dream, some people cannot see the baseball players but they are still there. so what do we do, how we sort out what's real and what's not, what's true and what's not rent this is actually here, as a metaphor for white water rapids. how business offices in national north carolina, so good white water rapids about 40 or so miles west of it. when we have our world journalism institute classes there we sometimes take our students out to it. and we go down the is within about 25 students at a time in six rubber boats and when i and one of the rubber boats because i was the only one there i was a poor captain and i was running under bushes and under trees and so forth and everyone ended up in the water at some point and one potential reporter ended up in the middle saying let me out which we eventually did and she did not really make it as a reporter. white water rapids, practicing good subjectivity and we use it. we have a reporter all over the country and a couple in africa and asia and so we get together and every couple of weeks, as were discussing stories and how to them, who's going tobe our protagonist, antagonists and so forth, we use this rapids as a shorthand . because people who know white water rapids talk about six times rapids area number one is sort ofgently down the stream , anyone can do it yet i am capable of doing a number three. number six is going over wonderful and a lesser real expertyou're going to die . >> last one, class one is where the bible takes an explicit position easy to follow along riyadh for example adultery is wrong. so in a story but say about sexual practices we would not make an adulterer of your area and again i want to emphasize that taking strong position where god takes one does not give us the way to misquote our opponents or mischaracterize them or ridicule them, god is the god of truth and he does not require public relations help but nevertheless here's a clear position and that will influence the way we tell the story. last two, the bible takes an implicit implicit position. parents are responsible without godly education of their children we support bible days cooling at home and private schools are in public schools if the parents think that's best for their situation that we don't think those school could pretend god doesn't exist. that's not neutral, pretending god doesn't exist. so one class to, we will take a position but it's, we may not be as wrongly, we will acknowledge as we always do alternatives but we will still say there's something that the bible tells us is right and something wrong in this. partisans on both sides" scripture verses is totally careful study through the bible leads to conclusions. for example, one of the things we tried to avoid, we talk about showing concern for the young unborn, uneducated, unemployed, the unchurched,the unfashionable . but what's most important is not whether we feel righteous it's theweather we are helping or hurting . all people are made in god's image with the capacity to be creative and productive, to a greater or lesser extent. i think we find from biblical teaching and experience that encouraging people not to work are often harmful rather than helpful. and we will come at it that way and we would acknowledge this as this is a hard thing. what we do when there's a person union station asking for money to give to not to give, this is hard and it requires experience in a sermon and we probably still get it wrong a lot of times we would still say there's biblical teaching here that's useful . and then we come to class iv. where there's no clear biblical path, we can bring to bear significant historical experience and a biblical understanding of human nature and for example we should not trust tyrants to honor a peace treaty. we see teaching from the bible about being suspicious in those circumstances and history shows that as well and from my own communist party experiencei've learned that personally . class v, there is no clear historical or psychological trail, but there's some experience that we must be wary. i can choose one particular example because we aresitting here just off capitol hill . we should not expect efficiency from big bureaucracies. there's something we heard learn from human nature that something is gained but something is lost in that process and we should not be surprised when we have big plans and big projects and they actually turn out to be hosti