Catholic League president Bill Donohue looks at how the media are covering the papal visit to the U.K. thus far:
The coverage has been mixed. The Tribune newspapers, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, were quite fair. The extensive piece in the Washington Post was also very fair. These newspapers focused on the pope’s remarks and the reception he received, mentioning the abuse scandal but not making it the focal point.
On the other hand, the New York Times story led with the scandal, relegating what the pope had to say to the back of the article. Perhaps most telling was the fact that the gay-obsessed newspaper put the story on the pope below the fold on the first page of the “International” section: top billing was given to the discovery that monkeys first contracted AIDS 32,000 years ago. Newsday, the scandal-ridden Long Island daily, had nothing to say about what the pope had to say, but it did discover two more alleged victims; due to serious budgetary problems, the newspaper could not afford to buy a plane ticket for its reporter, so he wrote from home.
The broadcast evening news was just as mixed. ABC’s coverage was fair; NBC’s was dismissive; and CBS’s read like a “60 Minutes” indictment, never mentioning anything the pope said.
CNN.com gave space to an English homosexual who hates the Catholic Church, never mentioning that he wants to lower the age of consent for adult-child sex. The National Catholic Reporter, a dissident weekly, afforded space to a nun who refuses to identify herself as a nun, suffers from priest envy, and generally hates the Catholic Church’s teachings on sexuality.
There was a time when the elite media could be counted on to be relatively fair. Those days, however, are long gone, save for stories blaming monkeys for AIDS.
