(Edited and paraphrased from the original dialogue for grammar and printability.)
Dr. Marvin Olasky taught at The University of Texas at Austin for twenty-five years and edited WORLD magazine from 1992 through 2021. He has published over 28 books, including his most recent, “The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-level History, 1652-2022.”
This semester, he is teaching Advanced Feature Writing and was featured in the Res Publica Lecture series.
K. Start: Tell us a little about yourself: what do you do for a living and how did you get to this point in your career?
M. Olasky: God’s providence. I feel like I have been drifting down the mighty Mississippi rather than following a railroad schedule with precise times.
I grew up in the Boston area, became interested in journalism in high school, and worked on the Boston Globe. In between college and graduate school I bicycled across the country to Oregon, worked at a small newspaper there, joined the communist party there, went to [University of] Michigan, came to believe in God, left the communist party, and became a Christian. A couple of short moves, a couple of years working at the DuPont company, and then University of Texas at Austin.
And then I started editing WORLD in 1992. By 2007, [my grown sons] were out of the house, and I had a choice of either playing up the string, which you can do as a tenure professor, or go on adventures.
I chose to give up tenure and go on adventures.
K. Start: What have you come to believe makes good journalism, whether it is written for a Christian or non-Christian audience? Is there a distinction?
M. Olasky: I think there is a distinction there. I think it is good for a Christian magazine to be overtly Christian and explain to people that it is the forgiveness exemplified in Christ that makes societies work.
Unlike other world religions, in Christianity, there is forgiveness. We do terrible things, and God is merciful when we come to Him. In fact, He comes to us. That was certainly my history—I didn’t go looking for God, God was kind enough to come looking for me. And if someone has really done something bad to you, you can reply with an attempt at vengeance. Or you can forgive. Sometimes it is slow: the process of forgiveness usually isn’t something that happens in a day or a week or even in a year, but by God’s grace, it comes.
K. Start: Do you think that good journalism can promote forgiveness?
M. Olasky: Yes. What I tried to teach at WORLD for 29 years was Biblical Objectivity. The simplest way that I can explain it is that we bought our house in Austin in 1997, and it’s a house on the side of a hill. It’s a tall house, and it’s fun being up on the top floor while there are heavy winds, because there is a little bit of a sway. That initially concerned me, and I wanted to know if the house would push over. Providentially, the builder lived right next door. He showed me the blueprints, the four huge metal rods that went down into the stony ground, and proved that it’s not going anywhere.
That’s very good when the builder is next door. And happily, through God’s kindness, we have the builder right next door, and his name is God. He’s left us a very thorough document called the Bible.
Biblical Objectivity is trying to understand the house that God has made for us, namely this world. We’re not God, and we’ll always fall short, but I think that’s something that Christians can put into practice in journalism. But it’s also something that people who aren’t Christians can do because that’s how the world is.
K. Start: Do you think the definition of good journalism has changed in the past twenty years? In what ways?
M. Olasky: Every journalist has a point of view of some kind. So there’s no journalism that is objective in the view of neutrality or worldview. Back in the 19th century when photography first came into use, people said that the journalist was like a camera, simply reporting what was there—but of course it depends on what way you point the camera. So one benefit over the past few decades is that there’s more recognition of that.
The downside of that is that instead of moving toward Biblical Objectivity, as I had hoped it would, it’s gone from conventional objectivity to utter subjectivity and polarization in a lot of places. Instead of trying to tell the truth and challenging their readers, publications try to make the bulk of their readers feel good about every story. That’s a huge problem in journalism. It’s not helpful for the publication, it’s frustrating for the honest journalist, and it’s not good for our society.
K. Start: Do you have any words of encouragement for Covenant students who are feeling cynical or overwhelmed by approaching the news?
M. Olasky: Each of us has the opportunity to create an echochamber for ourselves, or, in a way that’s much easier than it used to be, to get a diversity of opinion. That’s a great blessing to have, which we often throw away if we just want to have a feed of people who agree with us.
So students should deliberately look for views that are not their own and follow those people. Look for good writing that may support what you believe but also might not support what you believe and compare and contrast.
And be not cynical, but skeptical toward sources. We can all do that, but we have to want to do it. At WORLD, I always wanted to have at least one challenging article in every issue, that would challenge most of our readers. But that has to be intentional.
K. Start: Why do you think Covenant students have an obligation to seek out high-quality reporting?
M. Olasky: What’s going on in the world is very important. We see in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, that beings in heaven are watching what is going on here. And in a way, we are athletes in a field in a stadium, and angels are watching. It’s important to find out what’s going on.
We should know what’s going on in Ukraine right now, we should know what’s going on in other parts of the world, we should know what’s going on in downtown Chattanooga, at 12th and Peeples. Because if God cares about it and angels care about it, then we should care about it too.