During last week’s Lancaster County Commissioners’ meeting (on Sept. 21) the focus of the meeting turned to the journalistic practices of LNP|LancasterOnline. Tom Lisi, staff writer for the Lancaster-based newspaper, engaged the two Republican commissioners about their hesitancy to speak with LNP|LancasterOnline outside of public, video-recorded meetings. Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino both expressed concerns with what were in their view dishonest news articles from LNP|LancasterOnline. Parsons said the newspaper often editorializes new stories and injects politics into news articles.
Parsons critiqued the newspaper for a recent story which he believes misrepresented the county budget process. “This is false information and you put it out to the community,” Parsons said. “And so either you did it deliberately, which is possible with LNP, or you didn’t understand a very basic thing and didn’t ask any further questions.”
The criticism of LNP|LancasterOnline was not that the newspaper has an editorial section where writers can critique political parties, leaders, and policies. Rather, the main contention was that many news articles contain false information.
In fact, some of these errors remain uncorrected. LNP|LancasterOnline published an article on June 23 falsely stating that an outreach by a local church included a sign that said “Burn Gays.” The Lancaster Patriot published a story with photographic evidence that the sign said “Born Gay” and was held by someone not associated with the church. At the time of printing – over three months later – that false claim is still in the LNP|LancasterOnline article.
The interaction between Lisi and the commissioners brings to our attention an important aspect of news media: the importance of reporting the facts and the need to keep news articles distinct from editorial/perspective pieces.
Just the Facts, Please
There is an important reason our newspaper is divided up into sections. The “news” sections (Lancaster News, PA News, etc.) are meant to report the facts, whether people like them or not. These stories often include the viewpoints of the subjects of the articles, but the articles are not meant to convey The Lancaster Patriot’s perspective on the issues.
For example, on page 1 of Volume 2022, Issue 33, we ran a story by Michael Yoder entitled, “Local Theologian Attacks ‘White Christian Nationalism.’” The article covered an event in Lancaster where Dr. Greg Carey spoke about “white Christian nationalism.”
We received feedback from multiple readers following the publication of this article. The main criticism was that our journalist, Michael Yoder, did not critique Carey’s speech, but simply reported what happened and what was said at the event.
However, we believe that news articles should be focused on telling people the facts. Many people did not know that the ludicrous things Carey was saying are being promoted by a professor at a local seminary. If they read the article, now they do. And now they are better equipped to respond – whether that is contacting the seminary or telling others about it.
Another example of this was from a story The Lancaster Patriot ran two weeks earlier (Issue 31). Michael’s article, “School Controversies Front and Center in New Community Group,” covered an event that occurred at St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (the same location Carey’s speech was held).
Michael told me that he received feedback from at least one attendee that our article was a fair representation of the community group – a community group that many of The Lancaster Patriot’s readers (myself included) would have serious problems with. (Stay tuned for a future editorial on the group, known as the Public Education Advocates for Lancaster County.)
When voices generally opposed to the editorial position of the newspaper commend a news article, or voices generally in alignment with the editorial position of the newspaper critique a news article – and the reason is the same for both, namely, because we only reported the facts – we think we are on the right track.
In our news articles, we want to provide you with the information and let you consider it. There is a place for editorials (see below), but we want to intentionally keep that separate from our news pieces. We hope the reason for this is clear: the importance of reading the news in order to know what is happening around you. For example, we want you to know what Dr. Carey said, not simply what we think about what he said.
Of course, no newspaper (no matter how big) can cover every event and quote every community voice. However, we do try to present stories that matter to our county in a way that informs you as to what is happening. We certainly have room for improvement, but we strive to be an example in fact-based journalism.
No Neutrality
In addition to being committed to reporting the facts, the leadership of The Lancaster Patriot also recognizes that understanding the facts and applying our worldview to the facts is a legitimate component of our work.
From a Christian worldview, one of the reasons editorials are important is because the facts are not “neutral.” R.J. Rushdoony once wrote that the myth of neutrality is “one of the most pernicious and evil myths to plague the human race.” An anti-Christian, humanistic worldview posits that the world is an “uncreated and meaningless factuality, of brute or meaningless facts” wherein everything is “meaningless and also unrelated to every other fact.” In such a worldview, “all facts are neutral.” However, the Christian worldview establishes that facts have meaning and are part of a larger cosmos which exists for the glory of God. People and policies, parties and platforms, ideologies and worldviews, are never neutral. They are either honoring the one true God, or they are dishonoring him.
Therefore, in the articles in the “Perspectives” and “Faith” categories, we seek to analyze and interpret the facts, recognizing they exist within a purposeful world. Personally, I attempt to do so from a distinctly biblical worldview. Inasmuch as my analysis concurs with the Bible, I submit that it is true and right and worthy of implementation. But if my analysis is incorrect, it is only because I have misapplied God’s perfect Word. Each one of us is ultimately responsible to God for how we personally respond to the facts around us.
We are thankful for the opportunity to provide our readers with both news stories and perspective pieces. And we strive to avoid three major errors available to a news organization when it comes to this issue.
One is to twist the facts or misrepresent the truth in news articles. (This was Parsons’ concern with LNP|LancasterOnline.)
The second error is to mix news articles with perspective pieces. (A secondary aspect of Parsons’ concern.)
And a third error is to have the wrong perspective.
In point of fact, erring on the third point is likely to lead to errors on the first two. If the perspective is anything other than the Christian worldview, why not twist the truth to achieve a desired result? As I have written before, it is a bias towards the Christian worldview which calls us to be “unbiased” in reporting the facts.
We hope this commitment will continue to be a blessing to our readers, and perhaps an example to other publications.
Chris Hume is the host of The Lancaster Patriot Podcast and the author of several books, including Seven Statist Sins. He can be reached at info@thelancasterpatriot.com.
