Omissions, distortions, and half truths permeate secular news coverage of the Catholic Church. David F. Pierre of The Media Report levels the field of battle for media fairness.
Just as I started typing this post, I heard a perfect story with which to begin it. The famous sleuth, Sherlock Holmes, was on a camping trip with his friend, Watson. At four in the morning, a conversation commenced:
Sherlock: “Watson, are you awake?”
Watson: “I am now.”
Sherlock: “Open your eyes; tell me what you see.”
Watson: “Well, Cosmologically speaking, I see the Milky Way Galaxy spanning the sky overhead. Astronomically speaking, the Pleiades are visible in the Constellation Taurus. Meteorologically speaking, a few upper level cirrostratus clouds are forming in the west. Ontologically speaking, the Universe is just as it was yesterday, and all seems well. Umm . . . What do YOU see, Holmes?”
Sherlock: “WATSON! They’ve STOLEN our TENT!”
To some people the obvious is just not obvious enough. By “Catholic news” in my title, I do not mean news FROM the Catholic Church, but rather news ABOUT it. What should be covered in the secular news media’s reporting of Catholic news doesn’t always seem to make the cut. An example is the Fortnight for Freedom held in many major cities across the U.S. In the Catholic on-line world, the buzz about these rallies has been extensive. In the mainstream news media, it is as though this is all taking place in some alternate universe. I saw little in the mainstream press., and even less on the cable news networks. What is going on here?
If these rallies promoted radical feminism to protest Catholic pro-life movements, the news media would have made them look as though a cultural tsunami were taking place. I hope you can see through this. I wrote of the news media’s glaring duplicity In “Separation of Church and Penn State: A Media Double Standard,” and it’s worth revisiting especially with the recent news out of Pennsylvania.
The news media’s blatant omissions in regard to the Catholic Church are as slanted as its acts of commission – which are just too prolific to count. When the secular news media does write about events surrounding the Catholic Church, the result is too often disastrously distorted and exaggerated, or an outright lie.
Personally, I prefer the outright lies. They are easy to debunk, and most people who do their own thinking find the agendas behind them to be transparent. The distortions and exaggerations are more of a challenge, and depend on people being-aware of the actual facts to refute them.
One of the more glaring but subtle examples was described last year in “Cable News or Cable Nuisance? Gloom and Doom in America’s Newsroom.” You might recall that TSW reader Dorothy Stein sent the story to me along with a comment she had placed on the website of CNN. A CNN commentator told the camera with a straight face that “100,000 victims of sex abuse by priests gathered in protest at the Vatican and were denied an audience with the Pope.” Dorothy Stein’s clarification to CNN was ignored, but the true number of protesters, she pointed out, was 30, not 100,000, “though one can see how easy it is to confuse such numbers,” she chided. The news media counts on readers to be stunned into ignorance by the sheer volume of such stories; stunned enough to not look too closely at the details.
FROM THE NATION’S NEWSPAPER
Another example came earlier this month in USA Today, a newspaper that, until now, had given the impression that it at least wants to treat Catholics and their Church fairly. In an article about the Philadelphia trial of Monsignor William Lynn (“Case reignites sex-abuse crisis,” June 9), USA Today published a claim that there have been “more than 16,000 victims” of child sexual abuse by priests in the United States since 1950.
In a published letter to the editor in USA Today (June 12), Suzanne Cyr of Rye, New Hampshire used that number to call for anti-Catholic public alarm asking, “What would our political leaders do if more than 16,000 children had died from some other negligent behavior perpetrated by an adult?” Another published letter by Bernice Durbin of Crossville, Tennessee concluded that Catholic priests “don’t deserve First Amendment protection.”
I could not believe I was reading this in the nation’s second largest daily newspaper. Could you imagine the backlash if USA Today gave a platform to someone declaring that Jews, or Muslims, or African Americans no longer deserve First Amendment rights and freedoms? As I wrote in “Honoring Father Norman Weslin,” those who have claimed to advocate for victims – some real, but many feigned – have created a whole new set of victims by dismantling the freedoms and civil liberties of a single class of citizens: accused Catholic priests. The outcome of the trial of Monsignor William Lynn in Philadelphia is the result.
In a three-part series, “When Priests Are Falsely Accused,” I made what many called a compelling case for how money has grossly distorted claims involving Catholic priests. There are not 16,000 victims of sexual abuse” by Catholic priests as USA Today declared. There are 16,000 accusers, the majority of them adults, not children, and almost all of them anonymous. It is sad enough that prior to 2002, a number of young people accused a small percentage of Catholic priests of wrongdoing. It is profoundly sad that most of those cases were the truth and those victims must be compensated – and have been compensated.
After 2002, the onslaught of anonymous claims by adults and contingency lawyers cashing in on the Church’s practice of settling everything, regardless of truth or merit, brought as much shame to this picture as the sexual abuse itself. It cheapened and obscured the real claims of real victims, and greatly exaggerated their numbers. USA Today editors know this – or at least they have no excuse for not knowing it.
ARMED WITH THE SLINGSHOT OF TRUTH
The “David” taking on Goliath in my title for this post is without a doubt David F. Pierre Jr. His two books, Double Standard and Catholic Priests Falsely Accused have provided multiple and compelling examples of the malfeasance behind many of the claims against priests that surfaced subsequent to 2002. His site, The Media Report has been a powerful service to the cause of justice and truth. In his well documented “Bombshell Report” last year, David Pierre detailed the findings of a former Los Angeles prosecutor and FBI investigator who declared that a full fifty percent of the claims against priests have been false, financially motivated frauds. There is simply no excuse for the news media not to have access to and report on such clear evidence. As one Catholic writer concluded after reading The Media Report,
“Greed ranks right up there with lust among the Seven Deadly Sins.”
Subscribing to The Media Report, which is free, would go a long way toward bringing balance to the news media’s sometimes cloudy agendas. Here’s a glaring example: when I faced trial in 1994, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper had daily front page headlines about my charges and trial. They carried photographs of the 28 yr. old accuser on the witness stand treating every lie as though it were the gospel truth while printing his name. When a new appeal was filed outlining new evidence this year, the same newspaper buried it on page 10 in a three inch blurb, but cited none of the new evidence. The Media Report provided the sole real news coverage of the appeal in a February 20, 2012 profile entitled, “Exclusive Report: Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest.”
I highly recommend spending some time at The Media Report’s new website. It provides a factual alternative to mainstream news of the Catholic Church that will make you wonder what planet some news editors have been living on. Its news reports are brief, and to the point. David Pierre has taken on the Goliath of our one-sided secular news media, and he deserves our moral support.
I’m giving USA Today the benefit of doubt on the story referenced above. On most days, I find its news coverage and editing to be just and fair, but its letters editor was asleep that day. Other papers have been so glaring in their anti-Catholic agendas that their coverage cannot be so easily dismissed as a fluke.
So I have to ask why any conscientious Catholic is still reading The New York Times, or The Boston Globe, or the Kansas City Star, or any number of secular newspapers and news outlets that openly promote anti-Catholic bigotry and have had an unimpeded penchant for doing so consistently for over a decade. As consumers of their product, those who subscribe tacitly endorse them and further their agendas. Morally, we simply cannot be half just, half truthful, and half faithful to our Catholic consciences.
DOROTHY IN THE LAND OF OZ
The secular news media isn’t at all alone in its distortions and agendas. There is no shortage of Catholics and Catholic writers using the sex abuse scandal to further some agendas of their own. It isn’t that they all tell a distorted or exaggerated story. It’s that too many fail to tell the whole story.
An example is an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal by David Gibson, a national reporter for Religion News Service. In “U.S. Bishops Still Stonewall on Sex Abuse” ( “Houses of Worship,” June 8, 2012) David Gibson compared the consequences for bishops with those for priests since the 2002 Dallas Charter was enacted. I cannot say that I disagree with him, especially with his description of the effect this has all had on the morale of priests.
David Gibson wrote of the United States Catholic Bishops that “accountability at the top remains unanswered.” He criticized the Bishops of Baker (Oregon) and Lincoln (Nebraska) who “thumbed their noses at the Dallas Charter’s mandatory audits.” The problem with David Gibson’s presentation is not what he has written, but what he left out. And for that, I’m giving the last word to TSW reader, Dorothy Stein who posted this comment on David Gibson’s WSJ editorial:
“Accountability to whom? To David Gibson? To the left-leaning news media capitalizing on the scandal? To SNAP and VOTF shamelessly exploiting it for their own agendas? I view the Bishops’ accountability very differently than does David Gibson. The Bishops of Baker and Lincoln may well be prophets in our midst for refusing to participate in the rules of this classic Puritan American witch hunt. There is another side of this story even more sordid than the first. I know David Gibson is aware of it, but like so many Catholic writers, he keeps a safe distance from it. By so doing, he lacks accountability to his readers. It’s the story of Catholic priests falsely accused, and it can be found at www.TheseStoneWalls.com/about/”
I’m pretty sure Dorothy Stein subscribes to The Media Report. If she doesn’t, I urge her to sign up. As for her comment, our friend, Father George David Byers would write on his Holy Souls Hermitage blog, “YlKES!” I, too, have learned a valuable lesson from all this: to stay on Dorothy Stein’s good side!
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Father Gordon, I pray for you constantly. Why does American Justice take soooooo long? It is disgraceful and puts your country to shame. I think the whole justice system in your country and mine needs to be re-structured. It takes far too long and in this way promotes injustice. It is far to open to vindictiveness and favours the guilty. Far too much money is made by those who are supposed to promote justice but simply promote their own pockets. I write to you, you write to me, I write back and back and back and the victim gets the inflated bill. It is disgraceful. Anyway, know that you are in my prayers constantly.
I agree with Ryan Macdonald’s comment. Many in my country judge America by it’s news media, and the judgement is harsh. especially among Muslims. I have written before that American news media could not possibly treat Islam the way they treat the Catholic church. The irony is that this is not a scandal for Muslims but the tolerance of it by American Catholics is. I suspect the problem is an American value system that dilutes everything else, even faith.
Hi Father!
All Catholics can at least do something….they can all pray!
Our Lady is a powerful means to our prayers!
Pray a rosary, go to Mass,pray a novena… we are not without options.
God is still in charge and all needs to be placed in His hands.
but we, in faith, need to be what we profess to be. We need to speak out and in this day and age with the social medias it is easier then before. Of course there will be criticism but there will be those who just might see the truth for once.We owe it to the Body of Christ to speak out for our abused through falsehood, like Fr. Gordon, Fr. Dom and the many others especially those who are no longer on this earth and can’t defend themselves.Yes, it is abuse for they have had their very lives ripped out from under them. Think how you would feel if you were wrongfully accused and couldn’t get people to believe you.
We all suffer from this in Christ whether you want to accept this or not. This is about our faith, all that we stand for.
God bless you Fr. Gordon. Prayers continue as always.
Your friend, Jeannie
David Pierre’s book, “Catholic Priests Falsely Accused,” was vastly different from what the news media has been reporting all along about scandal in the Catholic Church. As I read “The Media Report” I have come to believe that the Western news media now exists not to report, but to entertain. It is so sad that what was once the greatest democracy on Earth is now reduced to a daily barrage of who is rumored to be having sex with whom from the news media while much of the rest of the world struggles with frivolous things such as hunger and freedom and oppression. Thank you, David Pierre, for not letting the New York Times keep us in blissful ignorance. Thank you for not letting them have the last word on our Church and faith.
Dear Father,
I’ll keep on remembering you in my prayers every day that with G
God’s help you will never give up. Gemma
Yes, Yikes!
It takes courage to report the truth, mere cowardice to bear false witness. A free press is a rarity in the world; it’s abuse in the USA is particularly odious.
What’s worse is the silence of so much of the Catholic online world, which refuses to be crucified with the Son of the Living God, thinking that sycophantic political correctness will ensure niceness for all. When they wish to have priests, they will finally say, “Hey! Why don’t we advocate for due process for priests?!” But it may well be too late.
Thank God for the likes of David F. Pierre, Jr., Dorothy Stein, and an increasing army of those who take seriously that most wonderful of admonitions: “Be not afraid!”
As I write this, America is in a tailspin after the horrific decision of the SCOTUS, which trampled on the Constitution on many points, turning Obamacare into the scare of ScotuScare. While the onslaught of false reporting on abuse will continue unabated, and will, in fact, increase as a way to discredit the Catholic bid for first amendment rights in the face of SCOTUScare, the Catholic online world will use that news in this election year as an excuse to continue not to advocate for the justice and due process of accused priests, so many of whom are innocent of the charges pressed against them.
We thank the Lord for you, Father Gordon, for bearing the heat of the day for all of us. Your sufferings will bring many to heaven.
A note about another kind of heat. Father, I’m worried about you all in prison. There will all-time high temps this week. The temps in your overcrowded, no-circulation-of-air cellblock may reach into the lower mid one hundred twenties Fahrenheit. That 50+ Celsius. Lord, have mercy.
Fight on David Pierre and Dorothy Stein! They are so great to stand up like they do! I like Dorothy’s feisty little comments.
I went to an adoration chapel the other day in a different town. There on the pew was David Pierre’s second book about falsely accused priests. I was so excited. Now there are just that many more Catholics who are getting informed about the truth! Then they can go on and do battle armed with Mr. Pierre’s well-researched information. What a great idea!
Also Bishops Bruskewitz (from Lincoln diocese) and Vasa (formerly form Baker, OR now of Santa Rosa, CA) that you referenced are so great. These good and holy men have been fighting in the trenches for years and continue to this day. I’m grateful for such bishops who will stand up and fight for our church!
We need to pray for our bishops and well as our priests. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a bishop in some of these places or in these times.
God bless you, Father and your dear readers (Pornchai and the rest as well!)
I was so pleased to see references to my comments to CNN and on These Stone Walls in this post. As soon as I finished reading it, I got onto The Media Report and subscribed. It is indeed a wonderful effort, and it serves the Church with the simple truth. I strongly recommend that all who are concerned for the way our news media has become entertainment get onto The Media Report and subscribe. Let’s get behind Dave Pierre. I love the analogy of David v. Goliath. It is very fitting. Thank you for writing this.
Dear Fr. Gordon,
I was actually wondering about the lack of coverage in MSM of the Fortnight. But then again, maybe I am glad they didn’t cover it. As you have pointed out and described so well, they would only lie and distort the facts.
I can only semi-quote Jack Nicholson’s character in a Few Good Men: They can’t handle the Truth!
Loved the reference to Sherlock Holmes; he is one of my most favorite literary characters.
Prayers as always for you and all the men there.
Thank you, Father. I have no idea what this feels like for you, but I admire you. I pray for you and all “my” priests. How I wish you could all be more supported by the Church considering you give your lives for Her! It reminds me of what my mom always says when I complain about an injustice, “Life isn’t fair.” I’m just glad that God is, and He will take care of all of the things we can’t. Be stouthearted and trust in the Lord. As horrible as this is for you, He allowed you to be put in a position to be that “voice in the wilderness.” Keep up the good fight!
Thank you Fr. Gordon for this edifying article. It is timely just as I was yesterday reading a post on some blog for Dallas Catholics with very bad news about a catholic celebrity priest. We are daily being bombarded with that and that news about the catholic church and the priesthood, many of them false and some of them true. But as Catholics, do we believe in what the church and priesthood is? Are we capable of defending our faith, not with firearms and demonstrations, but with truth and prayer. Do we pray for our church and our priests? This is a wakening call to all of us.
Greetings, Father MacRae–I actually laughed out loud at the Sherlock Holmes story. I then had to read it out loud to my husband and a young student when they took a break from a delicate piece of luthiery (restoring a musical instrument.)
I don’t subscribe to or read any secular city daily newspaper. I occasionally buy the ever-shrinking-and-more-expensive L.A. Times–because I have a puppy.
I have previously cried on your shoulder about our local newspaper. I worked there for several years, quit with a letter of resignation, and now I look at it only to see who was born, who got married, who died, and who the editor is attacking this week. Several friends and I tried without success to establish an alternate newspaper. I have now cast this matter up to the courts of God. Speaking of courts, I am eager to hear about the progress of your appeal and will go to the appropriate sites to try to find that out. I know what the steps would be in California but I imagine New Hampshire might be different. I hope someone will let me know when the motion for new trial is granted.
By the way, a piece of good news, our parish now has a priest! Thanks be to God. We were only without a priest for six months. We are all really, really happy. This may be enough to get me to daily Mass.
Rejoicing in hope,
Babs
Father Gordon, Thank you for presenting TRUTH. I do not subscribe to any news papers, but do look forward to the news you present. Ido see tv local news, but switch chanel away from undesirable commercials etc.
You are filling a need for so many. God be with you.
People who write such stories against the Catholic Church seem to throw objectivity out the window. I naively think that they should at least by training recognize their own bias and question it in a deeper search for truth. In this way they would discover These Stone Walls or the Media report including that the investigator mentioned above found 50% of accusers have filed false reports against priests. So many writers want to essay a predetermined conclusion about our Church. Of all my coworkers and friends, only the most Orthodox Catholic friends conclude that there were other causes and contributions to the priest abuse issue other than celibacy, that church heirarchy was only concerned about themselves and were hypocrits. There is no mention about bad advice from psychologists, that many victims wanted no publicity, the instruction to avoid scandal, that the Church lost discipline on who was allowed in seminary, the lavender mafia and the exemplary efforts by the Bishops to regain control as shown by the graphs in the John Jay report.
Ted