WHO SETS THE PUBLIC AGENDA?

I was watching one of the so called news digest programs on television the other night and happened to see a segment about a new learning program for small children that called on the education professionals to avoid using the words “mother and father” when referring to parents. One of the people they interviewed was a friend of mine, Bill Muhlenberg (sorry if I’ve misspelt your name Bill). Bill heads up a Family watchdog organization from Melbourne and does a great job providing well researched materials that uphold the cause of marriage and family. He was put up against a young educational professional who was proposing this expression of so called political correctness and was making the valid points about robbing something of value in order to provide some kind of encouragement for people who didn’t belong to families where there was a father and a mother. The figure of more than 2,000 was quoted as the number of same sex couples who have children living in their households.

What intrigued me was not the usual to and fro of the argument and the assumption that what is happening must be right because it is happening. In fact the argument has gone beyond that. It is more right now to be in a same sex relationship with children than it is to be in a heterosexual relationship with children. The reason it is considered by its political agitants to be more right is because they propose the idea that people in heterosexual relationships should be discriminated against so that the others can be more greatly favoured. Those of us who think that father and mother is a good thing now have to have our identity stolen from us. What trendy intellectual rubbish this is.

As I thought about it, what intrigued me was not the destructive blows being yet again dealt to the idea of family, but the fact that the media have such power to set the public agenda. I know that will be not a new idea to anyone. If you take notice of how the media works, there is an agenda being set through its pages and its transmissions not based on newsworthiness but on selling advertising. News is not about reporting it is about ratings. Because it is about making money we must not assume that because its in the news then it represents any kind of common public agenda. The media set the agenda and then report on an agenda as if they didn’t set it. They create their own news items and try to make out that what they are reporting on carries a level of importance simply because it is talked about. When you add the importance that is placed on talk back radio and the ancillary forms of public discussion this only adds to the charade.

Often Christians can be duped by this process. We can often think that our agenda needs to be set by what is current as it is expressed through the news media. We can even think that if we make the news it is some form of achievement. Some Christian ministries think that its worth doing stuff just to get featured for thirty seconds on national television news…that somehow it represents impact. No way.

We have to set an agenda by a lifestyle that impacts our core spheres of influence. The Roman empire was won over by Christians continuing to do just that. The gospel won out by a process of simple osmosis. Ordinary people letting their light shine in their own dark spheres. This gives substance and credibility where it counts. What may assume a place of false importance on television today is forgotten tomorrow. What impacts another person you are in relationship with today builds for tomorrow. Lets keep setting the pace in our little public worlds.