On March 31, the Associated Press ran a story about a suburban Chicago man suspected of assassinating a Philadelphia policeman a quarter-century ago. The story, which was distributed to newspapers all over the country, mentioned that the accused was “23, a Catholic school-educated telephone repairman, when the shooting occurred.”
The Catholic League sent a letter to the president of AP asking whether the news organization would have cited the educational background of the accused if he had attended a public school or a yeshiva. We are awaiting a reply.
The league is not asserting that what AP did was “Catholic bashing,” but it is saying that a double standard exists: to red flag the Catholicity of a suspected assassin is unwarranted and feeds the negative impulse of those not well disposed to Catholics in the first place.
Contact: Louis Boccardi, Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020
