Editor’s Analysis: Fact or Fancy? A Look at Missions Communications

by Sharon Mumper

People find it difficult to accurately and sensitively describe events taking place a block away. How on earth does a missions communicator report on the complex issues facing the church in a country 5,000 miles away?

Things are really heating up in Outer Zambese. The Marxist government there controls the press, but jumbled reports leak out from behind the coconut curtain. It seems some kind of resistance movement is underfoot. One magazine describes the Zambese National Liberation Front as "guerillas" and says they are preying on church members and other rural folk. Another report calls the ZNLF "freedom fighters," and says the Marxist government persecutes the church.

Which report is correct? Or, are both inaccurate or perhaps even slanted? How is a missions communicator to evaluate conflicting data coming from countries thousands of miles away?

Today, thousands of missionaries and mission organizations are churning out hundreds of thousands of pages of written material and thousands of hours of speeches on events taking place on distant continents.

People find it difficult to accurately and sensitively describe events taking place a block away. How on earth does a missions communicator report on the complex issues facing the church in a country 5,000 miles away?

Not surprisingly, the sad fact is that often our reporting falls short of the mark.

To any writer or speaker, the source of information to be conveyed is critically important. But the missions communicator faces special challenges in getting to the right people-those who have access to the necessary data and who have no axe to grind. Additionally, the source must be able to communicate accurately in English, and at the same time be able to sensitively translate from the local context.

At times, it seems that the acquisition of accurate information is a nearly impossible task. And yet as Christians who claim as their Lord the one who called himself the truth, we must be dedicated to writing, speaking, and publishing only the truth.

How do we make sure that as much as is possible, the stories we print or tell faithfully present the truth?

For one thing, we can refuse to sacrifice accuracy on the altar of expediency. All communicators operate in a context of deadlines. There is never enough time to be as thorough in our research as we would like to be. Yet, it is not often that a story could not be held over for a following issue (or a later speech) in order to validate a source or follow up a lead.

We must beware also of allowing limited space or time to dictate deceptive reductionism. Many of the situations with which missions writers and speakers grapple are complex. It may take more space or time than is available to adequately and accurately report a situation.

In the name of our Christian integrity, it may be necessary to hold an article or speech on a complex issue until adequate space or time is available to ensure fair and accurate treatment of the material.

Any communicator may be tempted to give in to reductionism in order to avoid the unsightly clutter of loose ends in one’s reporting. It is unnerving for a writer or speaker who has amassed a pile of information and carefully constructed a story to suddenly discover there is a whole other side to the issue. A small yank on a loose thread may suddenly unravel the whole carefully-knitted fabric of a story. The temptation is to cut off the thread and go on one’s way.

We all know that reliable news sources are important. Yet, how carefully do we check out the sources of the information that comes to us? While many missions publications rely on primary sources for their major articles, too often smaller international news items are uncritically lifted from the pages of news releases or other missions periodicals.

This common practice is one way fiction becomes fact in missions circles. A news release or article based on sketchy second-hand information goes out and is picked up by a couple of other missions magazines, which publish the material without referring to their sources.

Other editors, seeing references to the same data in several different publications, may assume the reports are independent and corroborative, and the "news" gains credibility and respect as it finds its way into more and more publications.

The same unfortunate principle applies to oral communication as well. If the story tells well, why check it out too carefully?

Yet, as careful, responsible writers and speakers, we must refuse to accept at face value the information that comes to us. Do we know the source of the information? Have we found these organizations, or people, to be reliable in the past? Or, do they have a vested interest in presenting a certain viewpoint?

Do we have an axe to grind? Most missions writers and speakers are expected to present the work of their organizations in a favorable light. While they would rarely be encouraged to lie outright, there is the temptation to underplay or "forget" to mention facts that would detract from the positive image conveyed by the majority of the material gathered.

We must be careful also not to be swayed by our own emotional response to a situation. Persecution of Christians in distant lands, for example, often stirs a sympathetic response. In our desire to make known the awful truth, we may be tempted to overplay the facts at our disposal, to exaggerate the known offenses, or to paint the evil persecutors as darkly as possible.

Always our first desire must be to find the truth, and to present it as sensitively and clearly as possible, in order to accurately communicate it to those who trust our reports and who look to us for truth.

Certainly the God who calls himself the truth will be glorified in our work only when we who purport to communicate the truth do so with integrity and sensitivity.

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Copyright © 1985 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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