Message and messenger

ROGER Ailes, president of Fox News and today’s superstar in American media precisely because of the many smart moves he made that transformed America’s media and political culture drastically, wrote a book some years ago entitled, “You are the message.”

I must say that, given our human condition, it’s an exaggerated interpretation of how the relationship should be between the message and the messenger. But it’s actually the ideal to pursue, the ideal that was lived perfectly in Christ, the Word made man. But this will require a long explanation that can be done some other time.

The book’s thesis is a good antidote to a pronounced bias of many of our media practitioners who easily claim that the message should be completely separated from the messenger. While there is a grain of truth to this, it’s also wrong to say that both message and messenger have to be entirely divorced. The messenger is at least part of the message.

Truth to tell, it is only in Christ where the message and the messenger are completely identified with each other. In spite of that, many, many people question that claim for one reason or another, giving us the strong idea that it is not popularity that would determine if indeed a messenger has become the message. It’s something else.

Anyway, to Ailes’ credit, he managed to weave a strong argument to prove that indeed the messenger is practically the message. We have to take this reasoning for what it’s worth. It has its brilliant points, though again, I believe it should not be taken as the ultimate criterion or reason.

Here is how a review describes the book:

"You are the message." What does that mean, exactly? It means that when you communicate with someone, it's not just the words you choose to send to the other person that make up the message. You're also sending signals about what kind of person you are—by your eyes, your facial expression, your body movement, your vocal pitch, tone, volume, and intensity, your commitment to your message, your sense of humor, and many other factors.

“The receiving person is bombarded with symbols and signals from you. Everything you do in relation to other people causes them to make judgments about what you stand for and what your message is. "You are the message" comes down to the fact that unless you identify yourself as a walking, talking message, you miss that critical point.

“The words themselves are meaningless unless the rest of you is in synchronization. The total you affects how others think of and respond to you.”

It’s for these reasons that Ailes formulated some criteria that would make a messenger effective in delivering his message. He mentioned likability, authenticity and honesty. In our communications, whether in public or private, we should try our best to be likable—in the sense of being warm, etc.—and authentic and honest. And we have to worry about how to sustain these qualities, so we can retain the interest of our audience.

The others should see that we are identifying ourselves with our message, that we are not just acting as indifferent messengers. And that’s why, whatever the message is, whether we are for it or against it or neutral to it, that position has to be shown somehow, and the audience should be able to decipher why we have such position.

If we are to follow that paradigm and still want to be consistent to our genuine Christian identity, I believe that the ultimate and constant criteria to guide us should be, as always, charity.

It should be charity banked on truth and fairness and prudence, which is actually an ongoing affair that does not exclude trial and error, successes and failures. So we need to be sport and magnanimous here.

In this regard, I think it would do all of us well if in the usual run of our public discussions and debates of issues, where differences and conflicts are unavoidable, we can manage to show this charity all the time.

We have to try our best not to insist so much on our opinions, no matter how right and better we think our views may be over those of the others. We always need to give allowance to those who differ from us.

At the worst scenario, we have to learn to agree to disagree, converting the differences as occasions of mutual enrichment rather than of division, and to allow time and other elements to resolve things later.