Church Planting: Them Rainer explores the question of when a church revitalization should become a church replant.
Philanthropy: Chick Fil-A’s confusing statement about their giving doesn’t mean they don’t give to Christian organizations.
Politics: Andrew Scheer steps down as conservative leader.
Reporting: GetReligion points out some flaws in reporting on issues at George Fox College, The upshot, check what employees sign.
I ask the question because when I debate funding with my Canadian family for the Canadian public broadcasting service (the CBC), it’s often asserted that the government should fund public broadcasting so that it can give the people impartial information.
Now, for the moment we’ll assume that it is possible to have impartial information. Even with that, however, I’m not sure how the government funded broadcaster can be impartial when dealing with the parties to political disputes in Canada, when at least one of the parties to political disputes has as its basis, a belief that public broadcasting should have lesser (or in the case of radical conservatives like myself, eliminated) public funding. Will the publicly funded media be able to treat impartially those who advocate against their existence as an entity? It seems that in such an instance, they become a party to the political disagreement.
Of course it is possible to be impartial in that instance, but not very likely. This is especially true when one realizes that the majority of those working in Public broadcasting believe strongly in public broadcasting… that’s one of the reasons they work there.
Public broadcasting, in the sense of a broadcaster funded by the government, it seems, cannot be impartial to political disputes because they are themselves a party. They may not be officially part of a given political party, but they are an entity with a large vested interest in whatever decisions are made by Canada’s general public, and a vested interest that lies directly with the fact that they are (about 75%) taxpayer funded.
To me, this means that public broadcasting cannot meet its stated goal of providing impartial information to inform an electorate, not because the public broadcaster is evil, but just because they are a public broadcaster.
At this point, my opponents usually switch gears and tell me that the corporate media are no better. To be honest, I agree. Corporations are also biased and will not usually provide impartial information. That said, there is one benefit that the private news media has over the public one from my perspective.
Canadians aren’t forced to pay for the private media.
Suicide: It’s apparently a wonderful human possibility. I’m with Ruth Gledhill on this one.
Politics: North Korea claims to have put a satellite in orbit. U.S. and South Korea dispute the claim. What does this mean? Not much of anything.
Journalism: I so love when words seem to give more information than they actually do.
Islam: Geert Wilders finally releases his openly anti-Islamic film.
Oil: The price of oil goes up to $107 US. I’m glad I don’t own a car.
Catholicism: Americans ask: Who’s this Pope Benedict guy anyway?
Culture: Does virtual worship actually draw people into the physical Church buildings?
Journalism: Apparently good news is no news on Iraq, a new pew analysis finds
If you like me actually doing these things, thank Newfoundland weather. :-)
Homeschooling: An LA Times editorial sees Homeschooling as elitist and illiberal (avoid snickering here). Al Mohler responds.
Martyrdom: The Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Iraq is found dead.
Separated at Birth: Irish Calvinist finds out that Ray Comfort (Way of the Master) bears an uncanny resemblance to Pink Panther star Peter Sellers.
Humor:Beware Peer Pressure.
(considering) 8:28 