Sharpen your prophetic discernment
Facebook’s “trending topics” section is being exposed as a propaganda arm of the socialist left by Gawker Media’s online blog Gizmodo. Reporter Michael Nunez writes that Facebook employees, known as “news curators,” said they were instructed to “inject” leftist leaning stories into the trending topics even if they were not trending at all. They also suppressed conservative-leaning stories, even if they were trending as popular. In other words, the entire claim of free speech on Facebook is deceptively applied toward a brand of socialistic propaganda, promoting anarchists views such as Black Lives Matter and censuring conservative high-trenders, “having a chilling effect on conservative news.”
Nunez reports: “Stories covered by conservative outlets (like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, and Newsmax) that were trending enough to be picked up by Facebook’s algorithm were excluded unless mainstream sites like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN covered the same stories. Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or sources were similarly suppressed. The conservative curator described the omissions as a function of his colleagues’ judgments; there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of any political bias at work.” Facebook denies the allegations.
Despite Facebook denials, there is smoke here, if not fire. Media watchdog WesternJournalism.com, for example, says that it is logical that liberal reporters would report the news from a liberal slant. The difference, Western Journalism reports, is that until the 1960s, media outlets told people when they were editorializing. Now it’s not clear, as Western Journalism opines: “This new era in media conceit coincided with the advent of a liberal mindset that took on the weight of the world, a new era in which liberals felt that their ideals rose above God, tradition and country.” The news you are being fed is slanted toward a political ideal, usually one with communistic propaganda roots. The truth is far from most of it.
To discern the truth, we need to be grounded in the Lord. We need to be a true prophetic people grounded in the Holy scriptures. Speaking of the end times in Matthew 24:4, Jesus told his disciples, “Take heed that no man deceive you.” In John 14, Jesus said that when he departed, the Holy Spirit would be sent to guide us. He said in John 16:13, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.” As a prophetic people living in a time of great deception, we need to sharpen our prophetic discernment. Whether it is a propagandizing of the news or bad doctrine from the pulpit, we need to take heed that we are not deceived. Let us receive the Holy Spirit’s guidance into all truth.
