It’s a new commentary on Relevant Radio I want to point you to and ask you to participate in, both here and there. What’s the connection?

The commentator.

I’m thankful for the opportunity the network has provided to expand
on this ability to speak directly to listeners daily in a brief
expansion on a news item or current affairs topic, adding some
perspective to the headlines. Or a bit of the ’story behind the story’
that I’ve always looked for as a news and investigative journalist.
Whether it’s something new to think about, or a different way of
looking at something we hear all the time in the news, I’m trying to
give readers here and listeners there a different look at what’s going
on in the world - local, national or global. After all, borders have
fallen everywhere, communications have exploded in their reach and
speed, and we’re now referred to as ‘the world community’. Just look at
how often that phrase has been brought up lately in reporting on Israel
and Hamas, how ‘the world community’ is reacting….and so on.

How is this any different from the glut of other voices and
commentators and bloggers and news reporters out there? I hope it’s
more respectful, for one, and charitable and intellectually honest.
Words mean things, they have consequences. Let’s look at that in the
way news is reported. The language has been distorted and redefined to
shape public opinion so much that people in the modern culture have
lost their ethical reference points.

Pope John Paul II said “communications is a moral act”, and he
called on the communications media to take seriously our responsibility
to the truth in “that delicate exchange” between hearts and minds. The
premise of everything I do is that truth exists, that it is knowable by
the natural law “written on the human heart” (it’s the ‘ought’ when you
say ‘that guy ought not cut in front of me in line’), that all human beings have equal dignity no matter what, and that each and everyone deserves respect.

If you’ve just come here via ‘A Closer Look’, a warm
welcome. If you’ve been here as somewhat of a regular, check out
Relevant Radio’s online audio streaming and archived programming. It’s
a necessary resource of morally informed voices in a noisy culture of
politically correct chattering classes. Politics don’t determine what’s
correct, after all.

And while you’re here, check out the links over on the right. And at
those sites, check out their own links. Exponentially, you’ll get great
coverage of important news and issues of the day. It’s a hopeful sign
that there are so many intelligent, witty, ethical and incisive voices
in the conversation we’re having around the global table.

When some of President-elect Obama’s supporters got riled up about
his friend Pastor Rick Warren having a role in the inauguration
ceremony, Obama said Americans tend to be noisy and opinionated, but we
have to listen to each other and respect other views. Hopefully, his
supporters and opponents alike can agree to that, and maintain that
attitude.

But I’ll take a closer look at that, sometime after the inauguration…