Muggeridge and TV

Press, 25 February 1978, Page 17

Muggeridge and TV

Christ and the Media. By Malcolm Muggeridge. Hodder and Stoughton. 127 pp. $5.50. (Reviewed by Phyllis Guthardt) The wisdom of Muggeridge is purblind, enchanting and infuriating all at once. Nothing he writes can be dull: it is often brilliantly witty and monstrously unjust. These lectures were offered as the 1976 London Lectures in Contemporary Christianity at All Souls Church, Langham Place. From Muggendge's extensive acquaintance with broadcasting and writing, and his recent espousal of Christianity, one might have hoped for keen insight into the relationship of Christianity and the media. Not so. The written word is barely mentioned, radio receives curosy attention, but Muggeridge’s obsessive hatred of television dominates the lectures although some years ago he had his aerials taken out. His familiar theme is the decline of Western civilisation and this is affirmed always by dramatic overstatement: often melodramatic. He rightly observes that if an average Western man spends eight years of a normal life span looking at the television screen it will have appreciable influence on his mores or way of evaluating his experience. So viewers provide the wicked media manipulators with a "fathomless reservoir of credulity” into which to pour their corruption.

Religious broadcasters receive scathing condemnation, not for their ineptness, which is usually the criticism here, but for their compromise. The camera always lies; pictures, news, words are fake; book reviews and panels a matter of infinite weariness. The raconteur in Muggeridge, as usual, is in great form. Some of the anecdotes we have heard in other contexts and if they have little to do with the subject they are entertaining. The first lecture imagines Jesus fighting "The Fourth Temptation" — to become a television idol and with a mass audience over a network of prime time, sponsored by Lucifer Inc. The lecture then ends with a superbly moving peroration, which can only by envied by a preacher, as the genuine faith of Muggeridge shows briefly through the clever, cynical style of the remainder. Distinguished chairmen from the 8.8. C. presided over two lectures and their remarks are given at the end of the book, as well as questions and answers from the audience. This additional material with its just criticism helps redress the balance, and there is a useful annotated list of books and reports on the media. The book, sadly, can only be described as lightweight, a rather shallow caricature whete a deeper and fairer analysis would be valuable. [The Rev. Dr Phyllis Guthardt, a Minister of the Methodist Church, is at present serving as minister of Knox Presbyterian Church, in Christchurch.]