WASHINGTON D.C. What happens when the “freedom of the press” ceases to be free in America? In our new futuristic fiction series, that is one of the questions that we raise. In our first novel Edge of Apocalypse, we showed what could happen when a liberal media monopoly conspires with a corrupt White House to control the nation’s news and information. In response, our hero Col. Joshua Jordan, his lawyer wife, and a group of patriots form a secret group to launch AmeriNews, a hard-hitting, independant news service that challenges the status quo and gives American citizens “the other side of the story.” But it comes with a heavy price to Jordan and his family. In our second novel in the series, just released, Thunder of Heaven, you can read how this strangle-hold on America’s news continues to water the seeds of political and spiritual corruption in high places. But this isn’t just fiction. The headlines today show the fact that democratic Senators are demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate billionaire Rupert Murdoch and his successful News Corp. business which owns and operates Fox Television; and Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed, ordering an FBI inquiry. One of those Senators, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has been harshly critical of Fox’s political coverage in the past. The whole issue arose because the British News of the World, owned by News Corp., was recently rocked by scandal when evidence arose that some staff may have hacked into the phone records of various people while gathering news stories. What is the American connection? Because allegedly, reporters working for News International (also owned by News Corp.) may have paid money to English officials in return for a “scoop” on a news tip – a practice quite customary along Fleet Street’s news tabloids but it may be illegal under American law, and News International has offices in the U.S. But there is a bigger issue: the real target here may be Fox news, which has been a “thorn” in the side of liberals for years. Watch to see how some enemies of a truly free press will try to drag Fox into this. Our Founding Fathers were crystal clear in their opinion that because the press needed the liberty to freely criticize the policies and practices of our government, the media needs to be free of the crushing hand of government surveillance. But there is a prophetic angle to all this too. During the future tribulation on planet earth, Satanic forces will control the flow of information which, considering the electronic aspects of finance today, gives us an idea how those sinister forces will also be able to control the economics of the world. In Revelation 13: 14-17 we even read that a global “image” of Antichrist will be transmitted in a miraculous fashion, suggesting one possibility - a future Internet-type system that can transmit holographic (three dimensional) images. We can’t be sure of all of the technical details of how these End Times prophecies of Scripture will be fulfilled, though we have labored to be as true as possible to the Bible in our fiction series. But one thing is sure: Americans have nothing to gain and much to lose if our government begins a politically motivated crack-down on a news services that it does not like.
(c) 2011 Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall
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