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Some of the national newspapers reproduced their front pages from a hundred years ago in order to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of World War One. I was struck by the difference, for example in the Daily Telegraph’s front page in 1914 from the front page of yesterday. 100 years ago, there were no pictures, with the headline simply describing the development: England’s Declaration of War against Germany. It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth, and the crafting of facts in order to make an argument, or to present a particular version of events, is variously described as propaganda or, in today’s jargon, spin. It’s a commonplace that we live now in a more confessional age, and one more publicly emotional. But knowing the utter disaster that was to follow over the next four years, I found the way war was reported 100 years ago moved me; I found myself almost begging them to stop writing, as if the words could propel the events themselves. What is the place of emotion and persuasion in the reporting of news? Especially in the reporting of war? It’s not a simple question, and given the 24 hour news cycles we live with, it takes immense discipline from those who write what many read, who speak where many listen; because when time is short, it’s more easy to make recourse to loose rhetoric. The Christian gospels were themselves written to persuade, and plenty of people have found in there justifications for slavery and violence of all kinds. Many more have found inspiration to act bravely and imaginatively for the common good. In the end, this side of the grave, good religion will insist that we must remain humble before the truth; knowing that history is written usually by the victors, and that there is no set of reflections, journalistic, artistic, scientific or religious that will produce an immutable set of “right answers” with which we are supposed to suppress all others. In facing the news from warzones on this and other news programmes, our emotional reaction leaves us, and I imagine the journalists reporting, wanting to do nothing but scream. But a life of faith will demand that this is not where we stay: will insist that we resolutely search for the truth not instead of, but beyond our emotional reaction to the desecration of humanity that happens in war. After, perhaps in their hotel rooms, they have cried at what they have seen, we ask our news journalists to tell us in words that they have thought about, what they think is happening. And in the light of their deliberate words, we have a better chance of being unyielding in our own commitment to peace.