Why the mainstream must ignore social media

Debate of Christianity and Islam suffers in an era of thoughtless social media sloganeering.

“Democratic societies and the mainstream media will be better off when they learn to weather social media storms by ignoring them.” Picture: istock

Social media is at the heart of many of the issues polarising media reporting about religious freedom and Christianity.

In the years immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qai’da against the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, this newspaper developed a theme: how could a modern pluralistic democracy tolerate the rise of virulent religious intolerance?

The Left media at the time was wallowing in a “blame the victims” debate, arguing Muslim rage was the West’s fault. Never mind the failures of Arab totalitarian regimes to make sure their societies enjoyed the fruits of their oil wealth.

These different responses to the most despicable act of violence since World War II reflected very different strands of Western political thinking. Ours reflected traditional liberal democratic thinking going back to the Enlightenment. The attitudes of Fairfax and ABC arose from more recent trends in universities reducing history and social science to an examination of power dynamics and individual identity.

Polarisation of debate about Christianity and Islam has only worsened since 9/11 in this time of thoughtless social media sloganeering. Look at media discussion of three recent stories: the Easter Sunday massacre of more than 250 people in Sri Lanka, many of them in three Catholic churches; the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris on April 15-16; and the censuring of rugby union star Israel Folau for social media posts straight out the King James Bible.

Such disputes highlight the inability of social media and increasingly mainstream media to handle complex discussions. Conservatives bristle that progressives don’t pay sufficient respect to traditional Judaeo-Christian values while Left figures demean traditional positions as antiquated, racist, sexist or homophobic.

So Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are criticised for tweets about the Sri Lanka suicide bombings that mention “Easter worshippers” but not Christian churches, even though both specifically mentioned the Muslim religion of the 50 victims of the Christchurch massacre of March 15.

Prominent figures on the far Right tweeted far too early about possible Muslim terrorist involvement in the Notre Dame fire, even though there was no evidence for the claim and the fire appears to be the result of an electrical fault. Left wingers attacked those tweets and called out racism and cultural imperialism in Christian commentaries about the importance of Notre Dame. Conservatives hit back, pointing out how many churches and synagogues had been destroyed by Islamists in France. Few bothered to check the facts, which show more French desecrations were committed by teenage vandals than terrorists.

Folau, the nation’s best rugby union player, faces losing his $4 million, four-year contract for simply quoting the King James Bible saying hell awaits “drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolaters” in a private social media account that did not even mention his role in rugby. Our greatest AFL player, Gary Ablett Jr, was booed while playing for Geelong simply for adding a “like” to Folau’s post. National Rugby League chair Peter Beattie declared Folau would not be welcome in league, which nevertheless is riven by sexual assault, domestic violence and drug abuse.

People who argue Folau, a Polynesian devout Christian with a good personal behaviour record, is being denounced for simply stating what most people in Western societies have believed to be true for most of the last two millennia, have been branded homophobic and intolerant. Never mind his religious freedom or that militant Islamists almost never named as such by Left wing news organisations have thrown homosexuals off buildings and believe they have a right to kill apostates. Muslims are seen as victims and Christians and Jews their oppressors.

The dominance of these kinds of debates in mainstream media highlights the collapsing business model of traditional news companies: it’s easier to create television or news copy with which people can agree from social media storms than to spend the time and money on tough investigative journalism.

At a time when news rooms are almost totally dominated by the young because older, wiser heads have been given redundancy to save money, it is no surprise many reporters approach stories as if they are just out of university. They are. So does this matter?

Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson got it right on the Bolt Report’s regular Tuesday night media segment last week. Discussing Sri Lanka and the “Easter worshippers” tweets, he said truth was important to a proper understanding of events, surely the media’s role in a democracy. How can society really understand terrorism if mainstream media refuse to acknowledge that, overwhelmingly, terror attacks around the world are committed by Muslims.

Social media is replete with falsehoods and sceptical of the notion of truth. This is hurting mainstream media and Western democracies. How can one write or govern for all if there is no such thing as objective truth, just the truths of individuals and their disempowerment. Quadrant editor Keith Windshuttle wrote in the 1990s that such thinking was fundamentally at odds with the methods of journalism, which depend on time-proven strategies to reach truth and balance.

Back to 9/11 and The Australian’s traditional liberal democratic views of tolerance and terrorism versus Left analysis based on power, race and identity.

Much of the Left’s thinking grew out of US university women’s and African-American studies departments. Empowerment of women and people of colour is important to a modern liberal democracy. But at its extreme a focus on individual identity and power threatens democracy, which depends on the idea voters can decide what is best for the majority based on the truth of the information they receive from their media.

Once the leaders of movements for democratic empowerment of minorities used to advocate for shared human values. Martin Luther King longed for a time when the quality of a man’s character was more important that the colour of his skin. Now the colour of his skin is key so long as it is not white.

Modern social theory — like social media — lacks subtlety of thought and historical depth. Muslims are not always historical victims. The Moors conquered Spain and Portugal and ruled for 700 years until 1492. Europe learned much from contact with the Middle East during the Crusades, when mathematics, Arab numerals and Greek philosophy that had continued to flourish in post-Roman Byzantium made their way West with returning Crusaders.

Europe has been trading with China for centuries. Traders in the 13th century brought gunpowder and silk back from China, at the time the richest, most powerful and most populous nation on earth. China got its Communist system of government from contact with European Marxism, as did Vietnam. India got parliamentary democracy from Britain.

The evils of slavery ended after campaigns by emancipationists in England and Scotland. Our own Mabo decision is based on the High Court’s findings about the intent of British colonial administrators to protect the interests of our first inhabitants.

Complex developments over hundreds of years are not easily reduced to social media slogans. Democratic societies and the mainstream media will be better off when they learn to weather social media storms by ignoring them.