You are the Media

We are always hearing about the influence that the media has on our lives. Sometimes people accuse the media of being too liberal or too conservative. Most of us would like the media to just stick to the facts avoid slanting the story to one side or another.

But hang on a second. What is the media, really? It is a messenger that goes between an event and the listening audience. One form of media is called a medium, and some examples would include a TV station, a newspaper, a radio station, etc. I'd like to suggest another example: you and me. When we tell a story about an event, we are acting as a medium. The way that we tell a story will shape a person's perspective on that situation. If the person you're talking to trusts what you say, they may give your story more value than whatever they read in the newspaper.

It's important to consider the impact our words have on others. The Bible instructs believers to speak the truth in love. This instruction prohibits three types of negative media:

1. Speaking the truth without love. This is where the person is saying something entirely true, but the embarrassing/ hurtful factor outweights any benefit that it might have. The definition I use for gossip is, "Sharing information with people who are not part of the problem or the solution."
2. Consciously spreading lies. A half-truth and an exaggeration are undercover agents of the lie. We must strive to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
3. Unconsciously spreading untruth. When does this happen? When we don't know the whole story, we often tend to fill in the gaps with what probably happened. These are things that we assume, but don't actually know.
   

The next time you're recounting an event to another person, try to see yourself as a reporter. Base your conversation on facts that you know for sure and acknowledge any assumptions that you're making.

One last thing: pay attention the power that "estimation words" have. It the temperature is 79 degrees, one person might comment that "It's in the seventies" while another person would say, "It's almost eighty degrees!" If the temperature is 81 degrees, one person might comment, "It's just above eighty" while another could say, "It's over eighty degrees!". It's usually clear by these "estimation words" whether the person considers 79 or 81 degrees to be too hot or too cold. If you want to be a totally neutral medium in conveying the temperature, you could just say, "It's 79 degrees" and let the audience come to their own conclusion.