Â鶹Éç

Good Morning,

Telling the truth is and has always been a dangerous activity. It can bring down the mighty, it leads to the toppling of palaces and kings. But it is especially perilous wherever there is contempt for freedom, and the powerful can kill the messenger with impunity.

The disappearance and possible murder of Saudi reporter Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey, and the rape and murder of Victoria Marinova in Bulgaria, this week, highlight how dangerous this truth business is. Since 1990, 2,500 journalists have been killed whilst doing their work. And whilst many of those died in combat situations, there seems to be a growing trend of investigative journalists being assassinated by governments who don’t want their story told.

Khashoggi’s plight feels emblematic of the direction the world is taking. A Saudi man leaves his country because of his outspoken criticism of its leader, seeks paperwork in a country that is itself reported to have detained 245 journalists, in order to return to another country whose own leader has described the media as the enemy of the people. This level of jeopardy seems like something from a movie. ‘Get out your notebook,’ says Bob Woodward’s source in All The President’s Men. ‘There’s more. A lot more. And your lives are in danger.’ Tragically, for Khashoggi, it seems his work may have cost him his life (though the Saudi Government strenuously deny this).

‘He who allows oppression shares the crimes,’ said Erasmus. In a small way these words apply to those of us who listen to and consume the news on programs like this. Programs that rely on and can’t survive without reporters who are prepared to look into and say the difficult thing about powerful people and dangerous regimes. If we say nothing and do nothing to defend them who can be relied on to tell us how things really are? There would surely be no news worth hearing.

A long-dead messenger called Amos once spoke truth to the government of his day. He delivered the news to the king and it was very bad indeed. He said, you’re heading for destruction via fire and locust; but (and this was the good news) you can still change. If you reset things. Then Amos described a plumb-line – an instrument for measuring how straight and true a building is - and he challenged the king and his people to use it – to realign themselves, before the palace topple on their heads.

A prophet’s job was not to predict the future but to call out the present. Like a good investigative journalist, they had to trust their source, describe what was going on, however ugly and corrupt it might be, whoever it might offend, even at the risk of being killed for saying it. They had to name names, even when prefixed by the title Prince or President. It’s a dangerous but vital job for it leaves those who hear the message with the chance to reset things and do what is right.

Show less