In the “People” section of the December 17 issue of Time magazine, it is reported, “The Catholic League called for a boycott of the film THE GOLDEN COMPASS, saying it promotes atheism. The league previously boycotted The Da Vinci Code.”
In fact, the Catholic League did no such thing about either the book or the film version of “The Da Vinci Code.” We did ask the producers to run a disclaimer before the movie stating it was based on fiction, not fact (on the intro page to the novel, author Dan Brown had claimed otherwise). However, at no time did we start, or join, a boycott.
This is an indication of sloppy journalism. But Time doesn’t stand alone. On November 30, the UK paper the Telegraph wrote that the Catholic League “wants the film [“The Golden Compass”] banned or, at the very least boycotted.” While we did call for a boycott of “The Golden Compass” (as Time indicated) we never tried to ban or censor anything. We respect the author and filmmaker’s First Amendment rights, and we simply exercise our own.
