How to Decide What News to Read
We live in a constant deluge of news. Hundreds of headlines per minute pour out of websites, social media, smartphone and tablet apps, cable tv, the networks, magazines, newspapers, radio and other media. The sea of news has tools to help us stay afloat: aggregators like Flipboard, Pulse, Instapaper, Reeder, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Readability, Digg …. In fact, we’re experiencing a glut of news aggregators.
The media bring tons of news from all over the world—far more than we can possibly keep on top of.
Here is a snapshot of what someone somewhere considered newsworthy yesterday: airport shooting scares travelers, News Corp to split up, swine flu may have killed more people than previously thought, Indian prime minister shuffles cabinet, astronomers find galaxy they thought couldn’t exist, panel says all U.S. adults should be screened for obesity, Sudan pushes ahead with austerity measures, American president challenged on invoking executive privilege, Chinese space crew docs spacecraft to orbiter, Turkish prime minister warns Syria to beware, tropical storm floods Florida ….
How can you tell what’s important? There’s only one app for that: your mind. Much of the news on offer is, frankly, junk. You have to decide what’s important.
The maze of information is infinite. Each one of the millions of Internet newshounds can furrow into a corner that interests him—politics, business, finance, science, technology, health, entertainment, sports, weather, travel—and come away feeling informed.
But there is a vital dimension to news watching that most people miss.
It goes beyond merely knowing what is happening. It involves analyzing events and projecting how they could—and will—radically change our world.
Not only do most readers overlook this dimension, but so do most news outlets, staffed by tough, experienced professionals as they make their daily decisions about what to report on and how. A harried assignment editor—monitoring multiple newswires, tv channels, police radio broadcasts and telephone tips—tends to allocate his or her reporters to what looks potentially most dramatic: conflict-driven, telegenic “man bites dog” stories. But the simple fact is, short-term drama in most cases has no bearing on a story’s long-term importance.
Several other factors that attract attention—timeliness, proximity to the audience, celebrity of the subject, who is affected, etc.—may or may not directly relate to the true importance of a story. Add to that purely logistical factors—the suitability of a story for the particular medium; balance with other reports; resources invested (it’s not much of a story, but we’ve spent money on it, so let’s run it); organizational policy; ideological slant; sense of public need or taste; need for ratings/subscribers; accountability to advertisers. What ends up being highlighted may be light years away from what truly is most essential for readers or viewers to know.
The Trumpet faces many of the same decisions as we monitor world events: What will we cover? How should we write about it? How much space should we give it? What will we feature on our cover? We grapple with limited intelligence, personal assumptions and flawed perceptions as much as everyone else.
In some basic ways, however, we are quite different from any other source from which you may receive news. For one, producing a free publication—including our free monthly print edition and our free weekly newsletter—means we have no accountability to advertisers and little need to adjust our content in order to pander to subscribers.
But the key difference is the primary criterion we use to determine a story’s newsworthiness. It transcends and supersedes all other criteria by a vast margin—and is completely ignored by every other news outlet. Where other criteria swing and fluctuate and can suck the process toward silliness, this keeps it focused like a laser beam on what truly is—even in an absolute sense—important.
That criterion is prophetic significance.
In order to prove His omnipotence, millennia ago God recorded in Scripture descriptions of future events, and is now bringing them to pass (Isaiah 42:9; 46:9-10; 48:3-5). These provide tools to analyze events for their true significance—how the trends today are pointing toward the future as mapped out in Scripture. The prophecies are signposts pointing to the imminence of Jesus Christ’s Second Coming—an event which the Messiah Himself told us to prepare ourselves for by watching and praying (Luke 21:36).
For a practical guide on what news topics fit that prophetic criterion, read our article, “But What Do I Watch For?”
Of course, many scorn and dismiss this unique approach. But with it we are accumulating an impressive history of accurate, Bible-based forecasts—tracing back to Herbert W. Armstrong’s stewardship over the Plain Truth newsmagazine through the greater part of the 20th century—that anyone who is willing to should be able to recognize.
To us, news is much more than a curiosity. As we watch events aligning, bit by bit, step by step, with the prophetic view spelled out in the Holy Bible by the living God, it is proof positive that “the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:17) and that He is about to bring justice to this weary world. Thus, our message has driving purpose: to inform, to witness, yes—but also, hopefully, to motivate and inspire. The fact that each story has been chosen for its prophetic significance carries this urgent, implicit message: Seek God while He may be found.
