Some denominations within Christianity have patron saints. In overwhelmingly secular journalism, reporters normally don’t think about patron saints, but I’d like to suggest from the Bible a patron psalm.
Psalm 73 begins with a careful observer’s confession of depression: “As for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped. For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.” When I spent time in Washington in 1995 and 1996 and attended several Arianna Huffington dinners where rich folks and poor reporters mingled, I saw such journalistic envy, mixed with scorn
The psalm continues with what sounds like a reporter’s indictment: “pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment. Their eyes swell out through fatness, their hearts overflow with follies.” (On the other hand, I’ve heard wealthy conservatives complain about the press: “They scoff and speak with malice…. They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.”)
I’ve known some ethical journalists who faced down the temptation to become propagandists, suffered attacks accordingly, and responded with laments almost as eloquent as this: “in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning. If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children.”
Halfway through Psalm 73, such despair seems overwhelming. But here’s where a journalist who trusts the Bible had an advantage: “when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end…. Like a dream when one awakes, O Lord, when your rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms.”
With that understanding, reporters can review their past and project their future in a new way: “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast unto you. Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you?”
A biblical journalist sees how to avoid extinction and find joy: “those who are far from you shall perish; you put an end to everyone who is unfaithful to you. But for me it is good to be near God.” Psalm 73 ends with what should be a reporter’s job description: “I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works.”