Mainstream media fails to encourage a more active life
Active students help to dispel stereotypes
By Kip Brown

A flashy poster I read at work the other day displayed a perhaps clichéd, but wise, slogan: “Dull people talk about other people, average people talk about events, thoughtful people talk about ideas.” After some careful thought between games of soccer on the Playstation, I wondered: does our culture encourage lives that are dull and average, or does it encourage us to be thoughtful, active citizens?

If people take their clues from the mainstream media, they might be completely justified in labeling us dull and average. One instance of this dull representation of culture is how the mainstream news usually presents Christians. From what I perceive, the major news organizations either produce stories about Christianity in crisis or report the behavior of fringe religious right figures. So, you either encounter stories about some Episcopalians and their fixation on certain bedroom behavior or stories about Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Yet, in contrast to all of this, just this weekend at Habitat for Humanity, I experienced countless Christians taking theological ideas seriously. They were getting beyond the surface behavior of simply talking about people and their actions, and they were taking the extra step of engaging in loving relationships with people. In addition, the church I have been attending lately involves itself in comprehensive programs to rid the church and society of racism and to combat ideologies in this country that tend to increase poverty.

These are thoughtful Christians, an entity that is seemingly non-existent in the mainstream press.

Yet why does the mainstream news focus on the dull and average aspects of the Christian church? One could argue that the news is simply giving consumers what they want. Perhaps most people think a report about a church engaging the world through its care for the poor would be boring.

But I think the problem runs much deeper than entertainment value. I think the mainstream news, for the most part, keeps stories at the surface level to keep us from becoming thoughtful. Why? Because thoughtfulness is difficult. If you start challenging people with complex stories, you have not only set up a rigorous journalistic standard that you must live up to, but you also have perhaps interrupted many people’s (including my own) dull and average existence. It is much easier to produce stories about people or stories about people talking about other people.

Yet, our society is full of thoughtful people. From my own perceptions, however, it seems like the mainstream media doesn’t exactly encourage this state-of-being. So, I guess all I’m saying is that if we want to bring about a more-thoughtful society, rather than an average one, we are going to have to do a little more than read the news.