Can The Press Objectively Cover The Pope?

6:19 pm EST April 17th, 2008 | Media | 16 Comments

It seems to me the answer is no. The coverage is almost uniformly laudatory, dazzled by the spectacle with an occasional word about the globe-spanning sexual abuse scandal. Does coverage of the church need to be “tough”? No. But the arrival of the pope shouldn’t be covered as if Jesus himself landed on that jet.

Topic:

Related Posts

«
»

16 Responses to “Can The Press Objectively Cover The Pope?”

  1. Sean D. Martin says:
    April 17, 2008 at 6:55 pm

    I noticed how it was reported earlier today that the pop said the revelations of the sex abuse scandal had been hard on the victims.

    No. The abuse had been hard on the victims. The revelations had been hard on the church.

    Not at all surprised that the pope and/or media don’t get the distinction.

  2. jerry says:
    April 17, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    The Daily Show had some good coverage.

    http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=166361&title=blessed-week-ever

  3. revenantive says:
    April 18, 2008 at 4:30 am

    This pope is already on the fast track to sainthood.

    The first miracle: How does a group of child fuckers led by a former Nazi maintain global credibility and have meetings with heads of state without being met with massive civil unrest?

  4. anotherbozo says:
    April 18, 2008 at 8:16 am

    Amen, OW.

  5. jr says:
    April 18, 2008 at 9:23 am

    “covering up sex abuse is fine if you’re not black”-cable news

  6. Duros62 says:
    April 18, 2008 at 10:19 am

    the arrival of the pope shouldn’t be covered as if Jesus himself landed on that jet.

    Silly rabbit. Jesus wouldn’t need a jet.

    Reven: :-D Well said.

  7. Frank DiSalle says:
    April 18, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    The anti-Catholics are armed and ready, as usual…
    The Catholic Church is not the child sex abusers’ denomination, and very rarely is a Head of State’s vist marred by reporting scandals not associated with him personally…

    But why do I bother? Anti – Catholics don’t even recognize their own bigotry…

    I guess you won’t be satisfied until all child sex abusers are locked up for life.

    … Oh, wait! You guys are opposed to that.

    Never mind that school teachers (yes, Public School teachers!) abuse more kids than Priests, any day !

    Did I say that?

    Did you miss me?

  8. Duros62 says:
    April 18, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    Can The Press Objectively Cover The Pope?

    Dude, the press could not objectively cover a hole in the ground with a tarp.

    OMG IT’S TV’S FRANK!

  9. Duros62 says:
    April 18, 2008 at 5:03 pm

    Never mind that school teachers (yes, Public School teachers!) abuse more kids than Priests, any day !

    You can prove that, of course.

    I guess you won’t be satisfied until all child sex abusers are locked up for life.
    … Oh, wait! You guys are opposed to that.

    Quite the contrary.

    And it isn’t Anti-Catholic, Frank. It’s Anti-hypocrite.
    And that includes all religions, not just catholics.

  10. Frank DiSalle says:
    April 19, 2008 at 5:18 am

    sure , scott! as soon as you “prove” that the Catholic Church is rife with sexual abuse , by indicating that more than , say , 100 priests have been found guilty or even that 1000 young men have reported being abused , even found later to be untrue or unprovable…

    The story was about the Pope.

    Why back off?

  11. revenantive says:
    April 19, 2008 at 8:51 am

    direct from wikipedia:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse_cases

    “Clerical sexual deviancy allegations have been made against a variety of religious groups including but not exclusively Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns. An estimated 0.2% of Roman Catholic priests have been proven to be abusers.[1]

    Some incidents involved diocesan priests and members of the various Roman Catholic religious orders, with reports coming from the United States and Ireland. Cases involved seminaries, schools, orphanages and other institutions (such as the Irish industrial schools) where children were in the care of clergy. Criticism of the Church and its leadership focused on the failure to act upon information, and often to move priests who had received complaints from church to church in order to protect them. Some allegations have led to successful prosecutions of the accused, as well as civil cases settling for millions of dollars.

    The John Jay Report,[2] commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, found accusations against 4,392 priests in the USA, equalling about 4% of all U.S. priests between 1950 and 2002. Figures supplied by the Catholic League promote the view that abuse statistics in the Catholic Church are similar to abuse in other institutions such as the preliminary estimate of education abuse statistics compiled by the U. S. Department of Education.[3][4][5]”

    ___________________________

    So at least 1 out of every 20 priests is a sexual predator…and you know they are being very conservative with these numbers. I would assume this same percentage carries over to other religions as well.

    Where I live, defrocked catholic priests accused of sexual misconduct from around the country were funneled into a priest ‘retirement & relocation’ center that was conveniently down the street from a public grade school. Can you guess what happened?

    The problems with sex and the catholic church are deep. I haven’t even touched on priestly homosexual activity, which is well documented elsewhere on the web.

  12. Duros62 says:
    April 19, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    Doesn’t count, Rev. Frank doesn’t believe in Wikipedia.

    Where I live, defrocked catholic priests accused of sexual misconduct from around the country were funneled into a priest ‘retirement & relocation’ center that was conveniently down the street from a public grade school. Can you guess what happened?

    What could possibly go wrong?

  13. Sean D. Martin says:
    April 19, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Frank DiSalle: “by indicating that more than , say , 100 priests have been found guilty or even that 1000 young men have reported being abused”

    Well, Frank, what if one could only prove, say, 99 priests were guilt and 999 young men reported being abused. Would that make it OK because it failed to reach some threshold?

    Would it be OK to cover it up if only 75 priests were involved in molesting 600 children? Or if 99 priests would be OK, why not 100? After all, if 99 is OK one more can’t make that much difference. So I guess 101 molesting priests would be OK, too. For that matter so would 102. Or 103.

    Either direction you want to take this, Frank, it was a horrendous crime and the Catholic Church systematically covered it up which is equally horrendous.

  14. Nimrod Gently says:
    April 19, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    Shorter Frank:

    “I’ll demonstrate the proof of my ridiculous and insulting assertion just as soon as you hurp a derp derp!”

  15. Kristen says:
    April 21, 2008 at 5:55 am

    Sean D. Martin – well said!
    Frank DiSalle – Are you serious? If you are you are incredibly mis-informed. Visiting Heads of State are always criticized in the press, as well they should be! Secondly, who are these ‘anti-catholics’? People who think that priests shouldn’t get away with molesting kids?

    The fact of the matter is this pope is a massive hypocrite and liar. He was actually responsible for crafting the cover-up by establishing a plan for dealing with it. The information, and documentation is easily found yet surprisingly it is not mentioned in the news when the pope spouts his crap about the ‘mishandling’ of the issue!

  16. Frank DiSalle says:
    April 21, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Nothing has changed here…

    OK, so, the massive number of Priests .2% are guilty of wrong doing (not 1 in 20, 2 in 1000)

    less than 5,000 complaints from a Church with 100′s (hundreds) of millions of members? That is hardly “rife”

    But what do I know?

    I am a Catholic, too…