I HAVE A FAVOR TO ASK of my fellow Christians.

Could we please not watch Fox News so much?

That channel doesn’t produce informed Christians. It produces misinformed, angry, intolerant Christians.

We’ve already nailed that reputation.

We don’t need Fox News shooting us up with steroids to enhance it.

I brand myself as a news journalist who treats the Bible as his beat.

News journalism was my undergraduate degree. I wrote for newspapers before I went to seminary. I know objective news reporting when I see it. And I know hateful propaganda when I see it.

Fox News is to journalism what Russian state-run TV is to broadcasting. It has a strict agenda to sell, and it doesn’t let truth get in its way.

Honest journalism hunts truth the way my Grandpap’s hound dogs chased rabbits.

Fox News will chase a rabbit and tell us it’s the Antichrist…without a birth certificate.

It’ll scare us.

It’ll anger us.

It’ll brainwash us.

It brainwashes by telling us something that’s merely speculative, and telling it to us over and over again. Every day. Every week. Every month.

By the way, the president is not a Muslim. There are people in my church who still insist he is.

Objective reporting gives us both sides of double-sided stories.

That’s what I try to do in my books about the Bible. When I hit a controversial topic, I try to give you different sides of the story with such objectivity that you can’t tell what my position is. Sometimes that’s not hard because I don’t have a position; I can get as perplexed as the next guy.

When you’re looking for reliable information, look for that kind of objectivity in the news reporting about what’s going on in our world.

Look for both sides of a story reported in such a way that you can’t tell what position the reporter or the TV station favors.

You’ll know it’s objective reporting when you’re left to draw your own conclusions—when the reporter lets you think for yourself instead of telling you what he thinks, or what she thinks.

It’s important where we get our information.

That’s why I write books about the Bible. It’s a source of helpful insight.

Fox News, all too often, is not.

Paul pointed us in the direction we need to take our heads:

“You’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse” (Philippians 4:8, The Message).