In the wake of the Times
The New York Times hasn’t been credible on so many big stories for such a long time now, they’ve generated a sort of cottage industry of journalism to correct the record in the wake of their irresponsible and tendentious reporting. Good news is…there are many solid journalists and scholars out there clarifying how many ways the Times gets a story wrong, as they are right now in their attacks on Pope Benedict.
Like Fr. Raymond de Souza.
The New York Times on March 25 accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, of intervening to prevent a priest, Fr. Lawrence Murphy, from facing penalties for cases of sexual abuse of minors.
The story is false. It is unsupported by its own documentation. Indeed, it gives every indication of being part of a coordinated campaign against Pope Benedict, rather than responsible journalism.
Yep. That’s not only clear, it’s provable. Which Times’ reporting is not. Fr. de Souza lists plenty of evidence, but prefaces it with noteworthy circumstances that should have discredited the story in the first place and kept it off the pages of the paper had any good editor done their due diligence. Or even a passing check on the framework within which this picture was painted by author Laurie Goodstein.
The New York Times story had two sources. First, lawyers who currently have a civil suit pending against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. One of the lawyers, Jeffrey Anderson, also has cases in the United States Supreme Court pending against the Holy See. He has a direct financial interest in the matter being reported.
The second source was Archbishop Rembert Weakland, retired archbishop of Milwaukee. He is the most discredited and disgraced bishop in the United States, widely known for mishandling sexual-abuse cases during his tenure, and guilty of using $450,000 of archdiocesan funds to pay hush money to a former homosexual lover who was blackmailing him…He is prima facie not a reliable source.
Already, enough to render the story barely even tabloid-worthy. But that’s very telling of the Times…
A demonstration took place in Rome on Friday, coinciding with the publication of the New York Times story. One might ask how American activists would happen to be in Rome distributing the very documents referred to that day in the New York Times. The appearance here is one of a coordinated campaign, rather than disinterested reporting.
It’s possible that bad sources could still provide the truth. But compromised sources scream out for greater scrutiny. Instead of greater scrutiny of the original story, however, news editors the world over simply parroted the New York Times piece. Which leads us the more fundamental problem: The story is not true, according to its own documentation.
This is what always gets me, the major media all reporting from the reporting of others, which all goes back to the first ones who pick up a story from…The New York Times. Nothing is sourced, nothing fact-checked, nothing questioned for authenticity. Research really isn’t that hard. It just sometimes produces facts that don’t match the narrative.
Do read on, there’s so much here. And in this clarification, de Souza documents the history of the relevant timeline in this scandal from materials available right there on the New York Times website. Proving that somebody covered themselves.
The Times “flatly got the story wrong,” he says. “Readers may want to speculate on why.”
Here are some ideas.
