CHRISTIAN COMMENT: Media and faith
Are you receiving me?
Last week I spent three days talking turkey with a bunch of media hacks.
Not that we were actually talking about turkeys, you understand (although I believe I did eat it at one point).
We were gathered at the Hayes conference centre in Swanwick, in an unusually sunny Derbyshire, for the Churches' Media Conference - 150 media professionals, most of them committed Christians, taking a bit of time out from careers in TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, websites and more to ask hard questions, listen to provocative speakers and explore the search for values in our fast changing media.
So what did we discover? Rather a lot as it happens ...
As technology continues to change rapidly, so does the way we receive our information.
Some of it's good (we can hear about and respond to disasters far quicker, for instance), some of it not so good (the gap between rich and poor, and the wobbly reliability of much online news)
People of faith in the media wrestle daily with how their beliefs interact with, inform and influence their work.
They make a massive difference, and there are many brave and outstanding people who are brilliant at what they do and faithful to their Christian beliefs.
But we don't always get it right, and our mistakes are often in public
How the BBC spends its licence fee remains a subject for lively debate - particularly amongst media people!
Among some of the outstanding speakers were film and TV writer Frank Cotterell Boyce (look out in the Autumn for a powerful drama "God on Trial", based on a true story from Auschwitz), and courageous Arab Christian and secretary of the Palestinian Bible Society Labib Madanat.
Two challenges came out of it for me:
1. If you're a Christian, please pray for Christians who work in the media - that they can be both brilliant practitioners and powerful advertisements for dynamic Christian faith.
2 If you're not a Christian (or if you are, actually), examine your own consumption of the media.
How do your beliefs change what you watch, read, listen to and create?
And are you prepared to praise and encourage the good, as much as you might critique and protest at the bad?
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Weather for Worthing
Tuesday 14 February 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
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Sunny spells
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