(Clearwisdom.net) The media work that I am referring to here is interacting with external media. Some of my fellow practitioners feel that it is very difficult and even feel a sense of defeat. From an everyday person's standpoint, that is very normal -- none of us are professionally trained in media. Many are in the field of computer science, physics, biology, economics, engineering, or others are doctors or businessmen, and our only contact with the media in this lifetime has been limited to occasionally watching television or movies, reading the newspapers or surfing the web. Sometimes different professions really seem to be worlds apart.
I would like to hereby share some viewpoints as a practitioner with my fellow practitioners who do media work regarding how to break through our own mental frameworks and reexamine this issue of media work.
First I would like to bring up an example and that is the example of we practitioners in North America having done government work since July 20, 1999 (when the ban on Falun Gong in China first occurred). Two years ago, at a time when the situation changed so suddenly, we very naturally knew to step forward and safeguard Dafa and clarify the truth. But how would we talk about it? Who would we speak to? We basically knew nothing. After peacefully sitting on the lawn in front of the Capitol Building being scorched by the sun for several days, everybody finally decided to go into the House and directly clarify the truth to U.S. government officials and call for support. All we had were hearts full of sincerity and selflessness, and we started from scratch, figuring out what 'Senate' and 'Congress' meant and learning how to make appointments and prepare materials. And in the blink of an eye, two years passed. It has been completely without political interests, completely without monetary transactions -- all there has been that same sincerity and selflessness, plus knowledge of the relevant protocol and social graces that we gained through practical experience. By rights, that would never be enough to interact with politicians let alone gain their support.
Why were we able to move their hearts? It is because we were approaching the issue from the standpoint of cultivation and Fa-rectification. We all felt at the same time that we had to clarify the truth to government officials and gain their support.
-- because we were determined that we needed to protect Dafa, needed to firmly stop Jiang XX's government from persecuting "Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance (Zhen, Shan, Ren)." This is something that a practitioner is bound by duty to do. It complies with the principles of practitioners;
-- because we understood the proper relationship of reciprocity between government officials and voters. This is based on a moral foundation -- a reasonable and legal relationship between officials and the people that complies to the level of principles of the human realm.
Besides the above two basic starting points, we were full of confidence, undaunted by many setbacks. Finally, using the "Truthfulness, Benevolence, Forbearance" that cultivators cultivate (sincerity, kindness, fortitude), we opened up the whole situation, allowing more people to know the truth and thereby make a correct choice that was beneficial to the future of their lives.
Returning now to the topic of media work. Actually, the purpose of Dafa disciples' interactions with the media is also to clarify the truth, expose the evil, and save sentient beings. Media personnel who are able to understand the truth will, led by the righteous thoughts of Dafa disciples, naturally do the just things that they are able to do.
In today's society, when a piece of news is issued through a media outlet, it can cross national borders and break the divide between cities and rural areas, tens of thousands of homes and households, and all different fields and occupations. The media has become the main channel through which modern-day humankind transmits and receives information. This is also a unique feature of the 'life of information' led by modern-day people. At a time when the battle between good and evil is raging in the universe, with a domain as influential as the media, the evil will not only not pass it by but will control it and use it to do bad deeds. Thus, we must, and we should also be capable of, breaking through the arrangement of the evil forces. If we waver in the face of a stumbling block, or even give up, it would be safe to say that that would be something the evil would be very happy about.
Why is it that the situation has not been really opened up very well even to this day? I think, apart from the media itself being interfered with and controlled by the evil forces, our not breaking through our own human notions has also had a constraining effect. For example, the attachment of fear -- fear of the media's power and influence, fear that others will think we are inexperienced, that we're not doing things in accordance with the procedure, and so on. All of these have inadvertently lowered one down to playing the role of an ordinary person who has to beg for something from the media. There are also the attachments of catering to and stooping to the concept of media, taking ordinary people's opinions and experience as your guidance or a rigid framework, and lowering oneself to the position of a latecomer to media work. However, as cultivators, we have precisely forgotten that "media" is not some colossal entity, nor is it an abstract concept. It is a social domain that is composed of many people. And amongst these people, it is possible there are many who are waiting for us to go clarify the truth so that they can do what they are supposed to do for Fa-rectification in the human realm at that level, from the standpoint of their job. In this way, they can place themselves in their future positions. Actually, seen from the principles of cultivation practice, it really is this way. After a media personnel understands the truth, everything they do to expose the evil, on the surface looks like it's supporting and helping Falun Gong practitioners effort to gain human rights, but in reality, their actions are laying the foundations for their own wonderful future.
Just as in clarifying the truth and exposing the evil in other arenas, what we say to the media is also to guide them to an understanding and acceptance. Thus, we need to consider how to help the other party better understand in accordance with the high moral standards of humanity. However, guiding does not mean lowering ourselves. We cannot use whether the other party can understand and accept something as our criteria for deciding whether we should go clarify the truth, nor can we use humans' distorted professional mentality to limit our practitioners. Those death cases and the brutal violence in the labor camps are things that were done by the evil. They are crimes that occurred among the civilized humankind of the 21st century -- the power of justice is needed to expose it and put an end to it. And the evil forces' murder of Dafa disciples does not take into account holidays or festivals, nor does it care about the frequency of the cases. The standard for our exposing the evil is that as long as the evil does terrible deeds to persecute Dafa and Dafa disciples, we will expose them to the greatest extent possible and let the world clearly see that they are lies, violence, and evil that are against morality, against humanity, and against peace. To tell the facts and the truth to the media is not only to support the Falun Dafa practitioners who are being persecuted in China, it is also for the sake of the sentient beings in the media who have a predestined relationship as well as for the sentient beings who are able to come into contact with the truth through the media and thereby have hope of salvation.
In another respect, humankind's media does not only have the effect of transmitting information, it also has the function of guiding society's moral customs through public opinion. Thus, upholding impartiality, respecting the facts, and advocating morality should be the basic occupational requirements for a media worker. The name of "a king without a crown" (a Chinese saying referring to someone without a title but who is very influential) used to be a tribute paid to the embodiment of righteousness -- journalists persisting in justice. It does not refer to the so-called 'no position' reporting that does not differentiate between good and evil and only superficially emphasizes "facts and accuracy." In the face of the righteous and the crooked, right and wrong, good and evil, 'no position' (objectivity) does not exist. To not expose the evil will have the effect of helping the evil to grow; to not advocate righteousness will result in one taking on the role of suppressing the good.
However, within the overall moral degradation of human society, under the effects of advertising clients, distribution numbers, affiliated enterprises, and other material interests, the media's "objectivity" was compromised a long time ago. Lies and facts are published together. Equal parts of good and evil have been turned into the "objectivity" of the media. Upholding fairness and justice is looked down upon as the inability to maintain "objectivity." There is even the single-minded pursuit of profit, publicly helping those who are engaged in evil, and other such things. These things are also caused by the degenerated notions that will be corrected sooner or later in the process of purification of humankind, and they need to be rectified.
When the evil factors that have a controlling effect on humans have been cleared out, people are very weak before cultivators. A cultivator's kind thoughts can affect people and eliminate people's bad notions. For us, media work is not work, it's Fa-rectification cultivation. If we can let go of our attachments to human notions and build up strong righteous thoughts, doing well should no longer be a problem because by that point, the power of the Fa will manifest through us.
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