London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

How bad journalism infects religion reporting

Tom Kington & Jamie Doward of The Observer lead the way

“Pope stirs up Jewish fury over bishop: The Vatican is reinstating a British priest who denies millions died at the hands of the Nazis. … Tension between the Vatican and Jewish groups looked set to explode yesterday after Pope Benedict XVI rehabilitated a British bishop who has claimed no Jews died in gas chambers during the second world war.”

Or rather, not. All the Holy Father has done is lift Bishop Williamson’s excommunication. Bishop Williamson’s excommunication had nothing to do with his holocaust denial, but rather with his willful disobedience to authority. Thus the lifting of his excommunication is in no way a “rehabilitation”, nor an endorsement of his dodgy views on history, but merely to do with the offense or state which brought about excommunication.

For some reason, this kind of misleading disinformation (whether out of malicious intent or just not being very good at one’s job) infects religion reporting more than any other field in the British media. You would think people would study or learn about the institutions they report about, but that no longer seems a requirement of the job as it presumably once was. Go figure.

Published at 4:01 am on Sunday 25 January 2009. Categories: Benedict XVI Church Newspapers.
Comments

I’m sure we all saw reportage of this ilk coming a mile off, when we heard about the lifting of the excommunication.

— Liam 25 Jan 2009 7:33 am

I notice two bizarre things about this. The first is that there’s no significant mainstream reporting on the implications of this for the (apparently quite bright) future of the SSPX and Traditional Catholicism generally. That’s the real story, and the publications of record seem to be missing it completely.

The second thing is the hue and cry from the Jewish community. Bp. Williamson’s beliefs about the Holocaust are unsupportable and foolish, but these beliefs really are beside the point. The subtext of the Jewish community’s remarks is that they believe their feelings should be among the Vatican’s central concerns, and that they have a vote in the Holy Father’s decisions (which he had the temerity to disregard on this occasion). This strikes me as a bit grandiose.

— Fred White 26 Jan 2009 3:37 am

Go figure? Don’t play the faux naif Cusack.
We all know that, while some of these journalists are both stupid and ignorant, the more influential (and their editors, and the owners of the rags they write for) know precisely what they are doing: poisoning the wells of knowledge.
“What big lies you tell, Granny!” “All the better to control you with, my dear!”

— B T Van Nostrand 26 Jan 2009 9:04 am

Have you seen getreligion.org? It’s a website devoted to this whole phenomenon.

— Aaron Taylor 26 Jan 2009 7:01 pm
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