Powerful images, prayer-filled response
The global village becomes more than a symbol when a major event captures an international television audience. The video images from such times—the Persian Gulf War or the fall of the Berlin Wall—linger in thought. This influence of the visual image brings with it a special responsibility, according to journalist Karla Vallance. Karla, who has experience in print and broadcast media, currently works with Cable Network News (CNN) in the United States. For her, prayer is indispensable to fulfilling her responsibilities—to her job and to viewers.
What are day-to-day demands of your job at CNN?
I'm a news writer. I have to grasp what is happening as quickly as possible and explain it in a way that is clear, concise, accurate—and in way that is interesting enough that people don't change the channel!
Are there ways you've found that a spiritual perspective helps you meet these demands? Absolutely. Having a spiritual foundation, or spiritual perspective, gives you a way to get right to the heart of the matter—to what's the essence and what needs to be watched out for. In television that's particularly challenging because so much of television is the visual image. That can be a very hypnotic thing. That powerful visual image may not really be what is really going on. It may be only what is on the surface. So it's particularly important to be able to know what's really happening.
I have a small example of the effect of a spiritual viewpoint. It happened when I was writing a show opening—where you have pictures of the key stories and a few words about what's important and why people should stay tuned. The two stories that we were starting out with were the fighting in Yugoslavia and a case of serial killings in Milwaukee. Those are two pretty grim subjects, and they're not ones where there is clearly a spiritual angle. In both situations people were pointing fingers at other people as causing the problem.
It was at the time of what was called "Healing Sunday" in Milwaukee, and the Mayor had called for people to stop pointing fingers at who had done things wrong and to start on the road to recovery—to start healing, to start coming together as a community.
It worked really well, I thought, to compare the two events—Yugoslavia and Milwaukee—and pick up on the Mayor's theme of healing. Any writer could have done that, and many would have. But I have a demand that I've put on myself to look for that deeper angle, for the good that's there which may not be obvious on the surface.
I try to approach the news in a healing way. I think that to tell the truth about something is the first step toward healing. We're trying to clear away the debris along the way, to get to the heart of the matter. And spiritual thinkers will pick up on that.
One of the things I've found helpful is a line from the Lord's Prayer and from its spiritual interpretation in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. The line in the prayer is "Give us this day our daily bread." Science and Health explains its spiritual meaning in these words: "Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections ...." I've been working with that line, "Give us grace for to-day," because so much of my work requires the grace that touches human thought, that makes people want to listen to what might be important for them to hear, to watch what might be important for them to see. I think that grace is involved with creativity, with freshness, with originality. My prayer is that I can express those qualities and make the message clear for the anchor who reads it, for the viewer and listener who hears and sees it.
Were there any particular challenges that the Persian Gulf War presented for you in your work? I don't think I've ever lived through as hectic a time as that. I was at work the night that the war started. We all had schedules; everybody knew exactly what his or her post was to be if and when war broke out. Management had done its homework, and that helped us do our jobs. But it was a very hypnotic time, I think. I had to work consciously on not being sucked in by what came to be known as the "CNN syndrome"—being addicted to watching the war on television. In the newsroom you get the feeling that you're right at the very heartbeat of the news, that everybody's watching and listening to what you're writing. I had to consciously fight against that hypnotic sense of just watching—getting caught up in the war and the hostility and the fighting.
Management was so concerned about it that there was even a note in the computer message system offering help to anybody who felt a need for counseling during this time. We had to work seven-day weeks without much time off. In my prayer for myself, I would work to know that since my true nature is spiritual, the image of God, I reflect the Mind of Christ, the Mind that is God. I could express the clarity of Mind, and so I could not be hypnotized.
It happened that at the same time I was dealing with a challenging office situation. I remember praying along a dual line, about the war and about the office situation, to understand that evil could not overpower good, because God, good, is all-powerful. Interestingly enough, the office situation changed markedly near the start of the war. There was a total change in approach; there was more quiet understanding. Other people noticed the change as well.
Do you feel that prayer can really have an effect in dealing with problems in the world? I find it has a marked effect in two different ways. In my job I have the privilege and opportunity of dealing with world problems in a direct way. If CNN is doing a story on the famine in Africa, the demand on me is to express that in a way which will bring it to the world's attention. The daily prayerful work that I do helps me prepare myself for getting to the heart of the matter and bringing issues to people's attention in a way that says they should care about them. But beyond that for me and for all of us, every stand that we take for goodness, every time we approach something from a prayerful point of view, every time we stop to affirm man's innocence and to affirm God's presence and the fact that God really is governing even when it seems as though He's nowhere in sight—every time we do that it adds to the scale of goodness in the world.
When I was working for The World Service of The Christian Science Monitor, I got a call one night from the office. The Washington Post had called. An intelligence source had told the Post one of its Middle East freelancers was in danger—he was on a list of people to be abducted in Beirut. The Post couldn't reach him with a warning, so a Post staffer was calling the Monitor to see if we knew where he was, because he also freelanced for us.
I was afraid, so I stopped and asked God to be shown what to do. It came clearly: it so happened that a next-door neighbor of mine used to work in Beirut with the freelancer. I called the neighbor, and it turned out he had talked with the freelancer just days before—and happened to know the phone number where he was staying. My neighbor was able to call him.
After I called the neighbor, I kept on praying, knowing that God was in control, that God was governing, that the Christ was present in the Middle East as everywhere. That this man was actually God's spiritual idea, an idea that was safe. Not only were they able to reach him; all the connections were made in just the right way. Even though it was a "bugged" line, they got word to him to get out before anything could happen. He was able to get out safely.
So prayer is a lot more than wishful thinking or naiveté in a merciless world? Yes. It's much more powerful because God is at the heart, God is the foundation of prayer, as is the fact that man is made in God's image. God made everything, and He made it good. That's what Christian Scientists start from. And that's why good is powerful. You have to go back to the spiritual reality—to God, Truth, controlling, governing, and to man as the expression of God. As Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "... Truth is real, and error is unreal." That's what gives prayer the power—not just being optimistic or happy-faced.
How do you think broadcast journalism can be improved?
The people I work with are typical of people in broadcast journalism; they try very hard to do the best that they can, to be fair, and to do their work well. I think watching out for the hypnotism of it all is important. The journalists need to watch out just as much as the viewers. There needs to be clarity of thought in the people who are putting out the pictures, who are writing the words, who are deciding what goes out. Most broadcast journalists I know are pretty aware that that's a real responsibility; they're aware of the "power of the image" on human thought. And they take it seriously.
The danger in broadcast journalism is that it carries you away even more than print does because of the power of that image. The ratings shoot way up whenever the news is about something that can impress the human mind. There are what journalists call "emotional spikes"—that is, stories that people care a lot about—for instance, little kids or other things that pluck at the heartstrings or make you afraid. If you have stories like that, you're supposed to spread them around in your show to keep people tuned in. That's a standard way of operating.
What I have had to do if I am going to be a part of broadcast news is to translate that concept. The way I translate that is to see it as an effort to touch viewers in a way that they'll care about what's going on. The goal is to have people care so that they want to know what's going on in the world, so that they can take action, so that they can be good citizens of the community or the country or the world.
Journalism has improved markedly over this century. And I think The Christian Science Monitor has had a big role in that. Television journalism is still in its early years, its first few decades. It can be improved by focusing on ethics, focusing on integrity. Viewers can be an active part of that process. They're not just passive receptacles for what goes out over the air. Once they know about an event, how do they deal with it? Do they stop and pray about it?
