How WORLD investigates

Last week major sections of an investigative article that received huge media play, Rolling Stone’s report on a gang rape and rape culture at the University of Virginia, turned out to be false, and the editors had to admit that.

WORLD over the past 20 years has published about 60 investigative stories of various kinds. Through God’s grace (and some procedures we’ve followed) we have not had to retract any of them, nor have we ever been sued for libel—but we’re aware that any issue could end that streak.

Many readers have asked how we decide whether to criticize some powerful institutions and individuals, both Christian and non-Christian, and how we go about avoiding error. Here are 12 thoughts and questions:

Ethical questions emerge as investigations continue. We sometimes have to deal with issues of leaked documents and deception, which we accept in times of war—for example, making Hitler think the D-Day invasion would be at a different place. We can extend that thinking to those who are clearly at war with biblical truth, such as abortionists, but it’s easy to fall down a slippery slope, so we need to be careful. WORLD has a reputation for truth-telling, and if we deceive others in pursuit of a story by creating our own sting operations and doing hidden-camera investigations, we may win a battle but lose a war.

As a story develops we discuss it in editorial meetings to sharpen its focus. Some financial investigations are complex, but we need to avoid “inside baseball stories” that only fans understand. (We don’t want to be left explaining the equivalent of the infield fly rule to readers who will be too bored to turn the page.) We make sure reporters have research assistance, if necessary.

Once a reporter sends in a draft, the work continues. On many investigative stories editors go line by line with the reporter: How do you know this? How are you sure about that? At least three persons, and often more, look carefully at every story before it is published. I sometimes ask our reporters for one more check: When submitting a story, underline any portion that says or suggests a person has committed a crime or done anything that would injure the person’s reputation. This underlining is the reporter’s attestation that he has double-checked those facts.

When an article makes accusatory statements about a person or organization, the accused party needs to be given the opportunity to respond in the article. If we have criticized a person by name in a way that could harm his reputation, and if we did not give his view within an article or a column, we are likely to offer guaranteed space in our letters-to-the-editor section of the magazine for him to respond.

State-of-mind is important here: We should humbly realize that the Ninth Commandment—“you shall not bear false witness”—indicts us all. If it merely said, “Do not lie,” then sometimes we could defend ourselves, because lying implies a conscious state. But we can be bearing false witness even when we think we are sincere, if our presuppositions and attitudes propel us away from honest accounts. Operating from our own understanding, none of us can hope to stand before God and be told: Well done, good and faithful reporter.

These policies I’ve laid out have been our practice for 20 years. Here’s one statement from March 23, 1996, that WORLD founder Joel Belz wrote about investigations:

It is a clear biblical principle that to whom much is given, much is required. From the early requirements for priests in the temple (Leviticus 21) to the apostolic standards for leaders in the New Testament church (1 Timothy 3), the issue has always been the same: Such people are to be “above reproach.”

If God had wanted his leaders to be perfect, he could have said they had to bring perfection to the table. But only Jesus has those credentials. God looks instead for people who are “above reproach,” suggesting their records cannot regularly leave unanswered questions in the minds of the very people they are to minister to.

There are three ways to be “above reproach.”

The first, and best, is to stay there in the first place. That doesn’t mean living a perfect life. It does mean getting an early handle on God’s grace, running from temptation, and consistently claiming the power of God’s Spirit to live a holy life in a terribly sinful world.

The second way to be above reproach is to take a time-out when brokenness comes. God’s leaders regularly take hard hits—some through sinful choices, some by personal carelessness, and some unavoidably because of the onslaughts of the evil one. But, in such cases, a little time away from the pressures of leadership is called for. It’s like the quarterback who takes a hard lick while dropping back to pass, and falls down stunned for a few moments. Because he’s a leader, he begs to stay in the game. But a wise coach benches even his star for a few plays, just to make sure all is well. …

A third practical way to get above reproach is simply to let the facts speak for themselves. A decade ago, the Christian media failed miserably on this front in the case of the Jim Bakker scandal. Rumors were widely circulated that the Bakker “ministry” at PTL had some big cracks in its foundation, but Christian reporters left it to the secular media to call Mr. Bakker to account. It’s not seemly for us, we said then, to get involved in such stories—as though our wishing them away would make them disappear.

The line between formal church discipline as outlined in Matthew 18 and informal accountability of the sort I’m talking about here isn’t always easy to establish. But when a Christian leader makes wide use of print and electronic media to win the support of the Christian public well beyond his own local church, that same Christian public has a right to know what’s going on in that leader’s life. Such public knowledge is precisely what will keep that person interested in staying “above reproach.”

And here’s my sidebar to a March 20, 2002, story on clergy sexual abuse:

WORLD is purposely leaving out of this story gross specific detail, but some readers may wonder why we are running it at all. The essential reason: Churches can take steps to prevent or at least reduce the frequency of clergy sexual abuse—if leaders and members are informed.

Reporting on evil is always difficult, because we’re well aware of Paul’s injunction to the Philippians: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). That’s our goal. We also know, though, that Paul thought and wrote about sexual immorality in Corinth, idol-worship in Athens, legalism in Galatia, hypocrisy in Jerusalem, and many other false, dishonorable, unjust, and impure practices.

Was he breaking his own rule? No. Imagine a family going to the beach on Saturday, or to church on Sunday, and driving by garbage heaps on the way. Should parents and children be depressed? No, they should concentrate on what is lovely. That’s the goal, so as not to drown in the sewage of the world. But the world will be a better place if a newspaper columnist on Monday describes that garbage dump and insists that it be cleaned up. Paul was called to look at and write about some rotten stuff at times, and so are journalists.

As we wondered at times whether we should take the easy out and drop this story on clergy sexual abuse, we were also heartened by what Paul wrote to the Ephesians: “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). It’s shameful to have to do this, but actions exposed by the light become visible, and that’s how evildoers are pushed to change their lives. As commentator Matthew Henry wrote three centuries ago, it’s vital that evil acts “be made to appear in their proper colours to the sinners themselves, by the light of doctrine or of God’s word in your mouths, as faithful reprovers.”

John Calvin’s point on Ephesians 5:11–12 is also good: Would evildoers “lay aside all shame, and give loose reins to their passions, if darkness did not give them courage, if they did not entertain the hope that what is hidden will pass unpunished? But do you, by reproving them, bring forward the light, that they may be ashamed of their own baseness. Such shame, arising from an acknowledgment of baseness, is the first step to repentance.”

So this is our message to anyone who thinks he can engage in clergy sexual abuse, or can cover it up: Don’t. If the thought of God watching doesn’t stop you, be aware that others may see. By bringing this question out into the open, we hope Christians will work toward establishing sexual-abuse policies in their own churches, and that church leaders will educate members about the problem and how to prevent it.

Finally, here are several paragraphs from what I wrote recently when WORLD’s reporting contributed to the demise of one Christian organization that had gone astray:

“How the mighty have fallen! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice.”

Some Seattle residents who despise Christianity are rejoicing now at the demise of the organization known as Mars Hill. But they don’t realize that a church is not a building and not an organization. It’s a group of saints who once were sinners and still do sinful things. We sin by using ministries for personal glory, or by lording it over others, or by idolizing others, but J.I. Packer’s three-word summary of the gospel is succinct and true: “God saves sinners.”

Those who rejoice don’t realize that because the church is made up of people, it doesn’t die when an organization dies. Some who suffered abuse will give up, but many Christians sing in church that we should “put no confidence in princes.” The Mars Hill saga is more proof that we should put our confidence in God alone. Or, as Earl Atnip, the uneducated but wise deacon who heard my first, weak confession of faith in 1976 told me, “People will always disappoint you. Christ never does.”

WORLD is a strange creature within the journalistic world. We’re a Christian publication but not a movement organ, so we publicly criticize Christian leaders and organizations when they haven’t responded to the private criticism that always follows abuses of authority. But we publish in the streets of Ashkelon while knowing that Christ came into the world to forgive all who put their faith in Him: That’s why we don’t have to cover up sin.

Within the limits of our resources, we will not leave it to the secular press to expose wrongdoing within the church. We will investigate problems within the redemptive hope that God turns weakness into strength.