No “etch-a-sketch” on the unborn

I have learned a few things since I started in journalism more than 20 years ago:

• A meeting of journalists is impossible to distinguish from a bunch of guys sitting around a bar;

• Journalists may report the straight facts in print, but when they talk about their role in getting a story, they are as truthful as Hollywood agents, professional wrestlers, or failed fishermen; and

• Not all newsrooms are created equal.

These rules have held true whether I was covering school board meetings, running one of the nation’s top-ranking conservative websites, or working in the pro-life movement.

We all know too well how the liberal media assault “anti-choice activists,” Christians, and average Americans of all sorts. They twist the facts to fit their narrative and hide the dangers of their agenda.

Certain “conservative” news outlets are ready – indeed, eager – to throw the same victims under the bus if it serves their purposes. This betrayal is portrayed as “consensus,” when it is merely two wings of the Beltway elite closing ranks against middle America.

These problems are magnified as reporters down the chain repeat the mainstream media’s stories nearly verbatim. In radio, they called this “rip and read,” simply waiting for a story or news release to come in and reading it with minimal changes. But what if the original story is slanted or inaccurate? The bias and errors are passed along.

That’s why LifeSiteNews is the most professional environment I’ve ever had the privilege of working in.

The journalists here are committed to their craft. They prize accuracy. LifeSiteNews won’t go “etch-a-sketch” on the unborn.

They go in depth, looking below the headlines and political spin to interview experts who can give depth missing from other stories. We are intelligence for the pro-life, pro-family movement.

Because the writers here are grounded in the issue, they are able to anticipate the shifting sands of culture to articulate where society is drifting next.

In fact, our coverage has earned us one consistent description.

“You are prophetic!”

Readers consistently tell LifeSiteNews’ reporters, “You are prophetic!” When society finally sinks to a new low, researchers inevitably find a LifeSiteNews article from several years earlier detailing how the problem would develop and the damages it would cause if indulged.

It is gratifying to see other outlets come to the same conclusions we did years before.

The problem with being a prophet is that sometimes people, both well- and ill-meaning, refuse to believe the forecast until it is too late to avert catastrophe.

“Things will never get that bad,” they say. “The people may cave on this accommodation, but they would never tolerate going any further.” Despite their track record of flawed forecasts, people keep listening, because it justifies their inaction.

But human beings from Gomorrah, to Caligula’s Rome, to the present day show a knack for “defining deviancy down.”

LifeSiteNews has been right about the trajectory of our culture for 16 years.

That’s why we fight against the devaluing of life in all its guises. Disposable sex with anonymous partners leads to disposable marriages, disposable children, and disposable elderly or infirm. Insolence before life begins, exercised toward the person with whom life begins, breeds insolence at the beginning of life, abandonment and exploitation during life, and self-interest that triggers its premature end. We will never shrink from exposing this truth in all its guises.

But our duty is to do more than tell the truth about the present and foretell a potential future. Our hope is to change the future for the better.

LifeSiteNews shows how delayed gratification leads to success, self-denial creates fulfillment, and human life flourishes only within a culture of life.

By reporting the stories that illustrate these eternal truths – with accuracy, depth, and precision – we provide the information needed to change minds, hearts, decisions, and culture.

These last few days of our Christmas campaign please consider making a generous donation to keep these journalists working for the unborn, for family life and truth in reporting on all the issues that matter the most.

(Click here to donate by phone/mail)

Ben Johnson
U.S. Bureau Chief
LifeSiteNews.com