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Foreign It's Thursday, March 26, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Okay, it's now happened. It hasn't happened until yesterday. After yesterday, everything in this sense is going to be different. So what happened yesterday? Jury verdicts against social media platforms were with multimillion dollar penalties. This hasn't happened before. You can draw kind of a line in history because things are going to be different from this time onward. I am in no position to tell you exactly what the fallout from all of this is going to be, but everything is going to be different. In the states of New Mexico and California, verdicts handed down judgments against social media platforms. They're two different cases, two different grounds, but the pattern is the same. In California, we are talking about a young woman accusing these social media platforms of intentionally addictive systems that drew young people in and caused mental damage. And she was not only vindicated in terms of the verdict, but she was also awarded $3 million. Now, you know already that $3 million is basically nothing when you look at the financial power of these big social media platforms. But in this case, $3 million is massive because this is exactly $3 million more than has ever been such a judgment before. Okay? So it also opens the door for a nearly endless number of similar suits. So we are looking at a very interesting moment. Now, of course, there can be appeals, there can be reversals, there can be all kinds of subsequent legal judgments. But at least at this point, something has happened that hasn't happened before, and we could see it coming. And now it happened yesterday. And the case in New Mexico had to do with law enforcement basically accusing social media platforms of making children vulnerable to sexual predation. And this involved the law enforcement coming up with child profiles. And supposedly these systems were protecting children from the kinds of contacts that actually did happen, and they were documented by law enforcement. And so it is very interesting to see how this has come. That's $375 million. So here's the BBC headline. Not talking about 3 million, we're talking about 375 million. The headline from the BBC Meta told to pay $375 million for misleading users over child safety. So in one case, just 3 million. In the other case, 375 million. The point is, both of these cases are game changers. And so you do have a before and after. It's going to be very interesting to see where this goes. We talked already about the California case, and it involves the fact that that there was a settlement with at least one of the platforms, but the case continued against some of the other platforms. And rather than go into names of the platforms, I'm just going to talk about the entire industry of social media. These major social media platforms, you basically know who they are. All right. In the California case, the jury was presented with a young woman who said she had been personally harmed by the intentionally addictive mechanisms that were built into social media, all kinds of other vulnerabilities as well. Lawyers for the social media platforms came back and said, yes, this young woman has had trouble, but the trouble is based upon other issues. The verdict from the jury really didn't have to determine whether the social media platforms were entirely responsible, just that they were responsible to some extent, $3 million responsible. But the point here is that this was one young woman. Now, just keep in mind the hundreds of millions of young women who are participants and users on these social media platforms. So this is just big news, any way you look at it. And for Christians, it's just a reminder of the fact that sometimes moral change happens by the invention of a new technology. Sometimes it happens by a Supreme Court decision. Moral change is pushed by social mechanisms. As we know, there is a basic moral decision to be made. And just to take the issue of, say, a divorce or the sexual revolution, you can see how there were arguments for the liberalization of abortion laws, arguments for the liberalization of divorce laws, but it actually took some specific happenings for those, I think, very, very regrettable moral changes to take place. Now you're talking about social media, and. And it's clear they're still making unbelievable billions of dollars. And quite frankly, as a result of these verdicts, it's not clear to me that anyone's going to say, you know, I'm getting off of social media. But I can hope at the very least, that parents look at this and say, okay, now, wait just a minute. Wait just a minute. We're now talking about jury verdicts, about very specific harms, very specific vulnerabilities coming to children and young people by these social media platforms. And I think most Christian parents are in the position to say, well, you know, I have real concerns here. I'm astounded by how many parents say to me, I have real concerns, Christian concerns about young people. I know my own children, my own grandchildren. And of course, it's not just children who are vulnerable. That's another moral point here. It's not just that children are vulnerable. It is two things. Number one, Children are uniquely vulnerable. The other thing is that social media platforms are more legally responsible with, when it comes to the involvement of those legally defined as minors. So that's why you're likely to see more and more of these cases, more and more of them having to do with minors. And that, by the way, there's a parallel to that. As you look at court decisions, legislation and policies related to so called sex reassignment surgery, again, what are called transgender procedures and transgender treatments, you have some legal momentum, some political momentum, some moral momentum. We're thankful for this about putting an end to that. But it is right now for, for teenagers and young children, those who are under age 18, because there is a different legal status and there is presumptive and actual a greater legal liability. And you see that reflected in these two giant cases coming from New Mexico and California. I'll just promise you this, of this, I'm absolutely certain this is going to start something rather than finish it. We are looking at a new era and it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out. I just want to say to Christian parents, Christian pastors, youth pastors and others, just understand that if these verdicts were handed down in the court of law based upon evidence, argument, judicial procedure and all the rest, you don't have to wait for all of that to take action. You should take when it comes to your own children and young people and social media. All right, there's another big news story that really brings back some headlines from the past, and it comes back to us now because of the death of Kermit Gosnell, who died at age 85. Take the headline in the New York Times, Kermit Gosnell, 85, dies imprisoned Abortion Doctor Convicted of Murders. Okay? We're talking about one of the most infamous cases in American criminal history having to do with abortion and murder. And I said it exactly the way I want to say it, abortion and murder. Because when you're looking at Kermit Gosnell, you're looking at someone who, in Philadelphia, a medical doctor who ran an abortion clinic. It was notorious. It was notorious for years in terms of basically an abortion industry that centered in Dr. Gosnell and his offices and also the reputation that had extended far Beyond Philadelphia about Dr. Kermit Gosnell performing late term abortions. And so he was performing abortions at the last stage of fetal development. So we're talking about the evil of abortion. And we just remind ourselves abortion's evil under any circumstance, at any point in the term of pregnancy. But when you're talking about these late term abortions, you're talking in some cases, about babies who could have lived outside the womb. Okay, hold that thought, because it's massively important. Here is why Dr. Kermit Gosnell was in prison. He was in prison because he was found guilty of murder. All right, you ask. We can understand morally the use of the word murder when it comes to abortion, the intentional killing of innocent human life. But how, in a context of law in the state of Pennsylvania, did this come down as murder? It is because Dr. Kermit Gosnell was found guilty of multiple cases of delivering babies who were alive and killing those babies, labeling those deaths as abortion. I think most of us would know by now that it takes an awful lot to get this kind of conviction in court. Courts have demonstrated an incredible tendency to come up with ways not to hold people accountable for abortions. And so what was different in this case? Well, let's just be very, very clear. This doctor intentionally killed these babies outside the womb. Okay? Now, I am not admitting in any sense that that is the most morally significant barrier. You know better than that. But it is legally important, and that's why this doctor was charged with homicide. So listen to this. The Times reports the procedure without too much detail, but with sufficient clarity. Quote. At the abortion clinic that Dr. Gosnell ran in West Philadelphia, prosecutors calling it a house of horrors, they said that he injected a drug to stop the fetal heartbeat while performing abortions often passed 24 weeks suggestation, the legal limit for abortion in Pennsylvania. But the drug did not always work, they said if a baby jerked an arm or drew a breath outside the Womb, prosecutors said Dr. Gosnell would cut its spinal cord at the neck with surgical scissors. One trial witness said that a baby killed by Dr. Gosnell had, quote, made noises, a whine, like my baby. Now, honestly, it's difficult for me even to read those words from a published report. It was that way back, years ago when Dr. Gosnell's trial was taking place and when his verdict was handed down. And I talked about it then on the briefing. We're talking about evil in its most undisguised form. You can't dress this up. It is exactly what you see it is, which is why the prosecutors brought the case. It's why the jurors heard the case. It's why they convicted him. It's why he was sent to prison, and it's why he died in prison custody at age 85. So let's just review Again, the moral issue. The moral issue is he administered a drug to bring about an abortion of a baby past 24 weeks of gestation. So that's already illegal. It's already illegal. Past 24 weeks, already illegal. Okay. Then when some of these babies were yet born alive, he used scissors to cut the spinal cord intentionally to murder the child. Now, here's what's very important for us to recognize. If he had merely used the drug to stop the heart of a baby who was right up until the moment of birth, and the baby had been born in such a way that officials would declare it to have been dead, then it is not likely that these legal consequences ever would have come. Let's just understand how the law is operating right now, and it just shows you the evil of abortion. But let's just zero in on the really clear, even to the public evil of late term abortion. You have babies who are at such a point of development that they can be delivered and they can live outside the womb. They can show life outside the womb. And this, the doctor, he died under prison custody. He died under a jury verdict of murder because he had cut the spinal cord of these babies with scissors. You know, let's be honest, it's questionable if the doctor had even used some other technique that might have gotten past the investigators, might not have been so well documented. Maybe there wouldn't have been in some cases, others in the room who would see this happen and then testify against Dr. Gosnell. I just want to remind Christians that these issues are a lot more current than you might want to think. The moral urgency of abortion and even late term abortion, it's more apparent than you might want to see. And that's why just days ago, we talked about the arrest of a woman in Georgia who had taken mifepristone in doses to. To bring about the death of her baby. But nonetheless, she went to the hospital, and at the hospital, she presented, of course, a very dangerous situation, and the baby was born and died sometime later outside the womb, which is why Georgia authorities charged the woman with murder. And of course, we have an update on that as well. Very sadly, the update is that many people think it's unlikely the prosecution will go forward. One judge has already said that it isn't believed that this is going to be an easy case. In this case, it is Judge Stephen G. Blackerby of the State Superior Court who said, as the Times tells us, quote, that is going to be a hard charge to convict upon, end quote. We are such a morally confused people. The Judge basically released this woman from custody. $1 in terms of the bail. It's a ridiculous situation, but it just points to the fact that we are really up against it in terms of the fight for the sanctity of human life. And quite honestly, we are looking at an awful lot of legal officials and prosecutors who do not want to take any action against a woman under any circumstance. And that is going to present some interesting issues, because let's just say to go back to Kermit Gosnell, he went to prison because he was the doctor. But look, there were women who knew exactly what they were doing when they went to see him. And so it is really interesting to see how a certain logic has taken hold in our culture. You see a reluctance to charge any woman under any circumstance for her involvement in this. And the first thing I want to say here is that clearly there are different levels of moral responsibility. And as I point out over and over again, the law is capable of making those distinctions. It does so even with the distinction between manslaughter and homicide, and involuntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter. There are all kinds of gradations in the law. But the point is, we really are looking at the culture of death. When you look at Kermit Gosnell, two things come immediately to mind. Number one, the transparent evil he represented, and number two, the rare fact of his conviction. It's actually rare that someone even like Kermit Gosnell would spend such time behind bars, would die under prison custody. And he did so not because he was performing the abortions, even at late stage. He did so because he was convicted of using scissors to cut the spinal cord in babies that were still alive. And so we really are looking at a moral, biblical, theological confusion here. And I'm afraid it confuses a lot of Christian people as well. It is interesting to look at the Times article about this quote, in most states, murder charges can be filed for the intentional killing of a newborn baby. But legal experts said the circumstances in Georgia did not appear to fit that description. The woman in this case, quote, is accused of taking actions that were intended to terminate a pregnancy and happened before the child was born. And that argument is made by Mary Ziegler, very well known figure, by the way, a law professor and abortion expert, big proponent of abortion at the University of California, Davis. Professor Ziegler said, quote, it would be a really big deal to prosecute a woman for murder for abortion, which is what this amounts to. End quote. Okay, again, but remember that even in this case, the baby was not declared dead until sometime after the baby was outside the womb. And you know, the moral confusion here, it's unavoidable, folks. It is unavoidable that we have to address this, because ultimately, if even pro life Christians are unwilling to state the truth about this matter, how in the world can we blame the secular world for falling short? By the way, there are a good many people pointing out that polling and surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans do not believe a woman under such circumstances should be charged. That is one of the reasons why we should not do morality by poll. Polls can be interesting. But again, what this tells us as Christians is that we have a lot of work cut out for us in the defense of unborn life. Okay, next, let's just look at some big news in terms of how the world changes around us. This made headlines, but it didn't, I think, get a lot of attention. We're talking about the news that CBS Radio, CBS News is, is going to go off the air. So CBS Radio News, which had been in operation for 99 years, is going to cease operations. Now you can look at this and just say, well, that's an interesting historical development. But behind all of this are just some really huge issues that I think should be of interest to Christians. So let's just remind ourselves about the technology of news, because this has so much to do with the world in which we live. Just realize that at one point, news could go no faster than a man could walk or run. And of course, you have ancient messengers who were very much a part of that. And then after that you had horseback. And then after that you had the development of trains. You also had the development of the telegraph that miraculously would allow communication even across a vast continent like North America. And by the way, one of the first national news stories that was carried was the electoral victory of Abraham Lincoln in terms of the presidency. Before that and before the telegraph, then the news could travel no faster than someone on a train or someone horseback. And of course, even the trains at that point were not exactly the fastest means of communication. So when communication was that simple, that straightforward, and it took that much time, you did not have the ability of the media to incite the kinds of passions, the kind of mass movements, the kind of immediate activism that you have now in the modern age. You also have developments that took place in the late 19th and 20th century that transformed the entire equation. And by the way, there were evangelistic and Bible teaching aspects of this as well. But all those issues basically rode on one technology, and that technology was the development of radio. So, okay, when did radio come about? Well, Marconi basically invented the predecessor technology that would develop radio, radio waves in the late 19th century. And by the time you have 1906, you have voice broadcasts. But they're very primitive and there aren't that many transmitters and there aren't that many receptors. All that really began to change in the explosion of radio in the 1920s. So just look at the period between the two world wars and understand that at that point, radio exploded.
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It exploded all over the place.
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And by the way, it developed all kinds of interesting patterns, even with the fact that you have radio stations identified by letter names, W in the east and K in the west. All kinds of reasons having to do with the first stations and what their call letters were and all the rest. But you also had the development of massive news systems. And at one point, it was just unprecedented that you could have a news story emerge in a place like San Francisco and you could hear someone on a national basis through an entire system of radio stations and radio broadcasting centers and radio towers, and then all the way down to radios and in local homes where you could have people gather around. They were generally big cabinet size machines that had tubes and cords and all the rest and had to warm up. And I'm old enough to remember when these units had to warm up in terms of the tubes. And then you had the ability for people all over the nation to hear something at the same time that simply had not existed before. And then by the time you have the Second World War, you also have the ability for a network such as CBS Radio News to have someone like Edward R. Murrow there on the European side from London in particular, broadcasting daily reports about World War II. That was unprecedented. Nothing like that had ever happened in the history of the world. Now that's also when you have the rise of, say, radio ministries, and all of a sudden you had preachers and evangelists who could use the radio waves in order to preach the gospel, to preach the scripture, or for that matter, to preach heresy, depending upon who was the purveyor of such. And you also had, of course, sports. Sports just exploded. And you ask yourself the question, which sport exploded most significantly? Okay, it was baseball. And so the baseball coverage, live broadcast of baseball games, became a staple of American radio. You also had something else. And a lot of people don't think about this.
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One of the other engines of all
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of this was betting, which involved horse races. And so it was a game changer when all of a sudden, you could have a horse race, and you could have it being called live by someone watching it.
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So all this is just a part
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of the background history.
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But radio news changed the entire landscape,
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and it did so in multiple ways,
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because not only did you have the ability to have mass news delivered to
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a mass audience, you had the ability
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of people to hear, say, a president's voice, to hear what were sometimes later called actualities, which were news segments in which you had not necessarily an entire speech, but you had a segment of a speech. And American news broadcasting was absolutely transformed. American newspapers were still in their prime during this period in the 1920s, and the depth of newspaper reporting was generally far deeper than what you could have seen, say, in a radio broadcast of several minutes. But the fact is that it brought the news into American homes, eventually into American cars, and certainly through a multiplicity of developments, including the development of the transistor, and thus transistor radios, where you can have teenagers putting a radio beside them on the beach. That was a completely new development, and you could have all of this taking place. And, of course, it was eclipsed by television. And television news, however, did not kill radio news. Why?
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Why?
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Well, the reason was you had to really be near a television to watch it, to get the full meaning of a television broadcast. But radio, you could just hear, you could listen to it, you could be in a car driving down the road. It could be a completely different kind of news experience by the time you get to our current generation. Of course, everything's been transformed by the digital revolution, by the World Wide Web, and by the rise of everything from websites and web news sources to, of course, podcasts and all the rest. Now even broadcast television has largely moved onto digital platforms. We also have social media, and frankly, there are an awful lot of Americans who get whatever news they get simply by posts on X or other social media platforms.
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I'm talking about it at this length today because it is a very big development. Bari Weiss, who is really transforming CBS and others there have made the decision that the expense of radio is just something that's holding them back from being able to capitalize on other opportunities. Is there loss here? I think undeniably there is loss. One of the things about radio news transmission is, is that virtually no one could stop it. That news carried on the radio waves. That's why Radio Free Europe and other forms of broadcasting even into communist lands, allowed people to hear the news and to receive it. And even the communist authorities couldn't keep out radio waves. It is interesting that at least some people are making the interesting argument that that is important. It is really interesting to know that there are many people making the argument that thus we should keep and maintain radio, and in particular AM bands of radio. And I am a proponent of this argument. And it goes back to the fact that communist authorities couldn't keep radio waves out. What happens if someone gets control over the Internet? What happens if someone cuts people off from the Internet? That's very different than a situation in which not even a dictator could keep out radio waves. I think, number one, there are millions of Americans who still listen to radio, even to AM radio. And I still do work on radio and gladly contribute to AM radio. I still believe in radio news. I still believe in radio commentary. I still believe in radio stations. I think they continue to be important and I think you will note the absence of them as something that not only will bring about nostalgia, but may well indicate risk. I have to tell you, I see the news that CBS News is collapsing as a great loss. It might have been inevitable in some business sense, but I think it will be missed long after it's gone. If nothing else, this headline comes with a reminder to us that we need to keep radio alive and a big driver behind that. Remember this is that the airwaves are free. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmoeller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter or go to x.comalbertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to spts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.