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Monday, March 18, 2013

All I Don't Know is What I Read in the Papers

We have a new pope! Not only that, but he's a Jesuit, the order that ran my alma mater. And he took the name Francis, my confirmation patron saint. So, I have a lot of reasons to like him already, which is good because I know next to nothing about him personally.

I realize this is uncharacteristic for a blog (particularly one run by your humble correspondant) but I don't know much more, so I'm going to shut up on this topic. If only others showed such discretion, particularly people who are actually paid to report the news.

I don't want to get into some kind of Poping contest, where I consider which one I like better than the others. That's not what this is about. I just loooooved Pope Benedict. He had a difficult act to follow, but he understood he wasn't John Paul II and didn't try to be. He wasn't wildly charismatic, he was a soft-spoken introvert. He seemed like someone who just wished everyone would pipe down for a minute so he could explain a thought was more than a 10 second soundbite snatched out of context. (I understand the feeling.*)

Sadly, he rarely got that opportunity. Instead, he was painted as Nazi (even though he was forcibly enlisted, and deserted as soon as he could escape). He was called an enabler of pedophiles (even though he was the one who took action against Fr. Maciel, essentially the moment he became pope). He was called a hard-nosed dogmatist (even though a brief perusal of his writings showed a gentle man explaining himself with clear-headed logic). His most lasting impression upon pop culture will almost certainly be the fact that he was an old man with bags under his eyes, who drew comparisons to Emperor Palpatine.

All this goes to prove that what GK Chesterton wrote in Edwardian England is still true today. "It will not be necessary for anyone to fight again against the proposal of a censorship of the press.... We have a censorship by the press."

Nearly every report about Pope Francis in a major non-Catholic media outlet has come with a subtle barb, an implied "Given that the last guy was so terrible..." I think you're well aware by now that I don't do research for this blog, so this NPR Morning Edition story is the first that came to mind. (Also, this interview with Sr. Pat Farrell) Note the implication that comes with these questions and responses. "He doesn't wear red shoes," "I grumble a lot about my Church's teaching, but...," "We're all in wait and see mode," a "sincere hope" that he would condemn child abuse (Benedict's famous reference to "filth" and John Paul II's term "appalling sin" apparently were not harsh enough).

Particularly for the parishioner interviews, there's no point of reference. Were their opinions a majority view? Or just the view that the person writing the story decided to highlight? Do these people have any particular competency to back up their opinions?

You'll notice that the implications are just that – implied. If the accusation were directly stated, it would be open to obvious refutation. Instead, it hovers in the background as something "everyone knows".

I think I have some insight into how this kind of things happens. I shudder to bring this shame upon myself and my family, but I must be honest here: I originally declared myself as a journalism major in college. For a semester and a half, I wrote for the school's official paper.** We had two editions a week. I wrote one or two articles per edition, for the princely sum of $7 per story. The stories were denominated in inches and I don't recall the exact conversion rates, but they were generally in the area 500-700 words. Any news story required at least three quoted sources. That part especially sucked. No one had an interesting opinion about that student government hearing you just sat through. And even if they did, it probably didn't coincide with the angle you were told to write about. Stories were assigned Monday and published Tuesday or assigned Tuesday and published Thursday

Tight deadlines, little pay, stories chosen for headline value by the editors instead of news value by the reporters. That's no way to run a news outlet. Yet, everything I hear about professional media outlets (with real alleged honest-to-goodness adults!) suggests it's not so different out there in the real world.

I only have two real areas of expertise: Computers and Catholic theology. And it seems like every time I read a news article about either of those subjects, I'm driven by the urge to take a red pen to the thing. "Common misconception, not true." "That's not what that word means." "That 'source' is actually a nut who doesn't represent mainstream thinking in the area."

Yet, I read about everything else and absorb it with the assumption it must be true. I'm stuck in Donald Rumsfeld's ultimate nightmare: unknown unknowns. I have no idea what I've absorbed that's just hanging around in the back of my head and is flat out not true. I don't know anything about the Higgs Boson or or Portugese austerity measures or Libyan rebel groups, except what I see in the papers. What else do I not know I don't know?



* Any comparisons between myself and Pope Benedict are purely a matter of kind and not degree. I might be excessively full of myself, but even my pride has limits.
** To avoid an libel suits, I will state upfront that all facts from here to the end of the paragraph are based on my fuzzy memory. I'm pretty sure I'm in the ballpark, but exact amounts are probably wrong.
** Part b, I later ran the website for their competition, the apparently now-defunct independent paper.

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