WORLD Radio Rewind

PAUL BUTLER: This is WORLD Radio Rewind: a 10-minute review of our news coverage and features from the past week on WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas Thursday. It brings to an end to 11-days of fighting.

On Tuesday’s The WORLD and Everything In It, Mary Reichard spoke with Jonathan Schanzer. He’s the Senior Vice President for Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mary began by asking why this old conflict boiled over two weeks ago?

SCHANZER: Since 1948, the Israelis have controlled different components of this land, but nevertheless, what we see now particularly in Gaza, is that there is a blockade around this territory. It's under the full control of Hamas, a terrorist organization sponsored by Iran, and the Israelis have done everything they can to prevent certain goods from coming into the country. And they've definitely made it harder to govern over there.

MARY REICHARD: What is Israel actually doing in Gaza and what specifically is the Israeli military trying to accomplish?

SCHANZER: The first thing that they try to do is take out all the rocket production facilities, as well as the storage facilities where the bulk of the Rockets have been based. There was also an effort by the Israeli military to take out what they call the metro system in downtown Gaza. This is a labyrinth of underground tunnels that Hamas created for commando strikes. Now the Israelis fake them out, they basically said they were going in on the ground, Hamas sent all of its fighters into this so called metro system. And that's when the Israeli started bombing they took out I'm going to say roughly 100, or 200 of Hamas is top fighters. So that was, I think, a major objective for the Israelis. 

On this week’s Olasky Interview Podcast, we featured a 2019 interview with WORLD Editor in Chief Marvin Olasky and Emma Green. She’s a religion reporter for The Atlantic. One of the stories Marvin was particularly interested in was her coverage of a shooting in 2018.

MARVIN OLASKY, EDITOR IN CHIEF: I could see that really got to you, and I think rightfully you were emotionally engaged in that story, and it showed, is that something you want to do more of?

EMMA GREEN: That's such a hard question.

OLASKY: That’s why I asked it.

GREEN: It's hard in part because I feel strongly not in that this is the right position, but just that it's my position, that writing is more interesting when it's not about the writer. I don't think I'm the most interesting part of any story, really. And I'm always wary about putting myself in the story. So in that sense, my emotions are not the center of the story. How I'm feeling is not the most important. What's most important is to capture how the people I'm talking to are feeling to give people who are not there a sense of what it's like to be there.

But I would say the hard part of the question is that emotion makes reporters better. I think it would be worse for me as a writer, and probably suspect, suspect for me as a person if I was able to attend the funeral of the two mentally handicapped, adult members of that synagogue who were known as the greeters of the community, who always showed up and stood at the door and handed people books and said, hello, I went to their funeral, which was packed at, you know, probably 1000 people or more who had come from Pittsburgh, but also from out of town. I sat next to a man who had driven with a busload of people from Washington D.C. in order to be there. I think it would, it would be worse if I if I didn't feel that in my gut, because it's horrible. And I don't know if I'm able to do my job as a reporter fully if I have iced myself off the mat and cut off my ability to feel in a moment like that.

PAUL BUTLER: The Atlantic reporter Emma Green from this week’s Olasky Interview podcast. Visit wng.org/podcasts for the complete conversation.

After more than a year full of event cancelations and social restrictions, many sighed with relief last week when the CDC announced their new mask guidelines. WORLD reporter Kim Henderson visited Art in the Park in Lynchburg, Virginia, and talked with people glad to be “getting back to normal.”

KIM HENDERSON: The CDC just lifted the mask mandate. 

SMITH: And so we are thrilled to be out here on this beautiful, sunny day. It's 72 and gorgeous, with no masks on, and we are thrilled.

Art in the Park participants seem equally excited. Artist Greg Paige has a canopy set up near the entrance in a select spot of shade. His customer is sitting still as a statue while Paige uses charcoal pencils to draw her profile. It’s an impressive likeness. Spectators line up to watch him work.

PAIGE: On the weekends I could always go out and draw portraits at festivals . . . this is really my first outside show since the pandemic.

Paige honed his skills at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts. These on-the-spot, while-you-wait portraits take him about 10 minutes. He says portraits are gifts that give back.

PAIGE: You’re getting it back because God is blessing you and filling you with all the joy He gives you. And so you have this talent to express yourself. So it’s not really me that’s doing the work. It’s God . . I’m His instrument.

No outdoor event would be complete without a food truck, and here, it’s Hardman’s Smoke Stack.

CUSTOMER: Can I get a smoked chicken sandwich?

Owner Nate Hardman describes one of their hot items—piggy fries.

HARDMAN: Piggy fries are french fries covered with, uh, barbecue, sour cream, cheese, and scallions. Something different.

From food trucks to portrait painting, the scene is colorful. Alive. A real picture of what organizer Rachel Smith says pandemic recovery can look like.

SMITH: People are excited. They're just so happy to be back out in society and really interacting with others. They're excited to be back in events . . .

MUSIC: SATURDAY IN THE PARK BY CHICAGO

PAUL BUTLER: Many of our WORLD staff are at Dordt College this week, leading a two-week journalism intensive. This year’s class of 26 college students and recent grads are busy writing, recording, and editing from morning to night.

During Friday’s program, John Stonestreet answered questions from WORLD Journalism Institute students. Anna Timmis is from Hillsdale College.

ANNA TIMMIS: How do I thoughtfully engage in the conversation about racial justice and police brutality when it's so hard to tell if the media coverage of incidents of police brutality are accurate, especially when many media outlets have an agenda?

JOHN STONESTREET: Hi, Anna, that's a question that not only are many people asking, but many people feel up close and personal.

I mean, look, there's there's a number of things that are making it more difficult to answer your question: First is a theory of everything that's now been applied to so many different contexts in our culture—academia, certainly journalism, certainly has overtaken certain, you know, generational demographics even. And, of course, I'm talking about various versions of critical theory.

And then you have a bunch of disenfranchised people who are so skeptical and cynical of anything that comes from the state of the media, that what is happening is they're using the specter of critical theory or critical race theory, to absolutely avoid having to have the conversation in the first place.

So how do we actually engage in this conversation?

First of all, we've got to start with the right foundation. The only foundation that provides the grounding for the conversation we need to have is the image of God, the image of God has been among the most consequential ideas in all of human history. It's not just something that Christians believe it's something that because Christians believed it and live that way, it literally changed structures and human hearts.

The second thing we need to have is not just the right foundation, but we actually have to have the right habit. And the thing is, is that we have been catechized by our devices to react and not think.

Think of how many times a story makes everyone breathlessly angry. And just a few hours or days later, the larger context comes out, either through more video being released, and suddenly realize the entire story is wrong. Or the entire story that you reacted to was wrong. Now, I don't know any way around that other than have better habits than everybody else. Don't feel like you have to tweet about something because somebody, you know, says, anybody who doesn't speak up is complicit. That's bogus language, based on a society that is addicted to quick takes an outrage instead of the truth. And Christians have to be better Christians have to know better.

PAUL BUTLER: For the latest news, features, and commentary from WORLD Newsgroup, visit wng.org. For WORLD Radio, I’m Paul Butler.

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