Catholic Press
Share
Transcript
Catholic Press
March 22, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Late this week, Pope John Paul II spoke out on the sexual abuse revelations that have recently scandalized the Church and forced Catholics to confront what the pontiff called "the mystery of evil." The pope beseeched church members to reconcile the pain of human weakness with faith in divine grace.
BOB GARFIELD:For the Catholic press, reconciling such conflicts is an ever-present challenge. Most of the 180 member publications of the Catholic Press Association are published by a local diocese under the authority of a bishop. As such, in reaching their aggregate 6 million readers, these publications find themselves working for the very institution on which they report. When scandal erupts, that conflict is particularly confounding. Owen McGovern, executive director of the Catholic Press Association, says his members do their best to be good Catholics and good journalists at the same time.
OWEN McGOVERN: Any sensitive issue that comes to light, you know, we report on it, and-- and quite in depth. I mean-- have you - this week is the, the best example of it. The Boston Pilot, the archdiocesan newspaper in Boston, just did a 28 page section on the situation involving pedophilia, and it's quite extensive. It's probably more extensive than you would find in the daily newspapers.
BOB GARFIELD:That's true. However it was reporting that was triggered by a scandal that first broke not in the diocesan newspaper but in the Boston Globe. Do Catholic newspapers do any of this investigative work themselves?
OWEN McGOVERN: You very seldom see a weekly newspaper break any story, mainly because of the, the, the time element. We have small staffs. We don't go out doing investigative work. But if something like this came to our attention of any of these sensitive issues, first of all our publishers of these newspapers happen to be bishops, and so first thing that would happen would be to find out--the-- what the reality is, what the truth is from the church's position. And we are Catholics, and our mission is education, communication, information and evangelization, and that's basically the role the Catholic press plays. We don't go around breaking stories-- but I would be-- less than honest if I said that if we did something like that, we would go to the church authorities and we would ask the questions with the intentions of writing the story, but on the same token, if the publisher who is the bishop took a different stance, then we would honor that stance as well.
BOB GARFIELD:Now what you've just described is certainly a, a gross beach of journalistic ethics. Are you saying that because your publisher in effect is the bishop for a given diocese that your responsibility is to keep him happy?
OWEN McGOVERN: That's not the case at all. Like I said, we educate, we inform, we try to communicate as best we can. But we also have a loyalty to the Church and that can't be denied, and I'd be the last one to deny that. And our loyalty to the Church is why we're in business. We're not in business to make a profit; we're not in business to sell newspapers to that extent. But we would like to offer our readers the truth and we would hope that the Church would feel the same way. And w-- and we don't do it in the name of journalism. We try to practice good journalism practices, but-- there is a - there is a fine line; we don't feel we're censored. There are cases I'm sure where bishops have more control over their paper than others, mainly because they want it.
BOB GARFIELD:There have been stories circulating and suspicions and conventional wisdom about sexual abuse by priests going back as far as I can remember. Hasn't your membership failed in its fundamental responsibility to its readers by not exploring these stories and trying to find out if they were true or not and then holding their diocesan leaders' feet to the fire to see that they're acting responsibly with regard to the, the parishioners and the parishioners' children?
OWEN McGOVERN: I would hope that none of my - the people that work in the Catholic Press Association as editors and journalists in general - would know that this was going on and, and wouldn't -- not only report it to the, the church authorities but report it to law enforcement as well!
BOB GARFIELD:Well then, going forward, what do you think is the role of -- under these circumstances -- in this new world we're living in of your member newspapers -- should they be more aggressive? Should they take the-- Church's assertions at face value, or should they dig deeper?
OWEN McGOVERN: They have access to the whole story. They don't have to write half the story. So I think they should dig to get the whole story, and then I think the Church right now, especially in its, in, in what it's going through, I think the Church will give that whole story-- where it didn't in the past. I think the, the newspaper will become more important than ever within the diocesan structure in order to make sure that they keep the people informed so that the people don't hear-- stories that may not be complete or may not even be completely accurate from other--media.
BOB GARFIELD:Since the bishop is the publisher of most of the papers that are your members, can journalism really take place in that environment when the organization that you're reporting on is actually running the newspaper that you are working for? It's almost as if I were expecting the Enron company newsletter to break the Enron scandal. It's just not going to happen.
OWEN McGOVERN: Yeah. There is, there is-- the fact that the bishop is the publisher. But ag--again to think that - you know - that this doesn't happen in the secular press -- there are numerous instances where advertisers have been influential -- I wish the secular news media were as, as pure as you would like 'em to be and I would like 'em to be. As far as from-- our concern - yeah - you know what? If the publisher says don't run the story - the story's not going to run. If that's-- a problem for some, then that's a problem. But the reality is the final judge are the Catholic readers who want to - they want to hear from the bishop - they trust the bishop - they want to know that - what's going on in the Church, and the Catholic newspaper is there to tell them.
BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Thank you very much.
OWEN McGOVERN: You're welcome.
BOB GARFIELD:Owen McGovern is executive director of The Catholic Press Association. For all the inherent conflicts of reporting about the church for members of the church, it's interesting to note that the Boston Globe was by no means the first national newspaper to report widespread sexual abuse among Catholic clergy and the Church's coverup thereof. That distinctions belongs to the National Catholic Reporter, an independent paper with no diocesan connection published in Kansas City, Missouri. It was the Reporter that first revealed the pedophilia scandal more than 17 years ago --and took a lot of heat for so doing. Among the accusations at the time says current editor Tom Roberts was that the paper was a journalistic Judas.
TOM ROBERTS: There were several different kinds of reactions. One was just what you said, that you're betraying the Church and destroying it. The other is that you're making too much of a few bad apples, you know, a few isolated cases. And, and-- others just said you know that, that this, this was - this simply should be taken care of quietly! That, that there's no business letting this news out. On our own board at the time-- there was a reaction by one board member asking for a vote of no, no confidence in the editor at the time, Tom Fox, who is now the publisher. He didn't get a second and he ultimately left the board. But there was, there were some real strains. It, it took I think a real act of courage to do that story and to keep after the story for so long.
BOB GARFIELD:A few months ago before the Boston Globe broke its story, Bishop Joseph Galanti [sp?] of Dallas who is head of the communications committee for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that he believes that the Catholic press should not be out muckraking but should help unify the church and, and he said that aggressive reporting violates principles of charity and respect for human beings and can often be too heavily weighted with innuendo. Do you think that attitude still resides anywhere in the Church?
TOM ROBERTS: Oh, I think it does, and I think Bishop Galanti in this case was simply incorrect. It's just silly to blame the messenger. John Courtney Murray [sp?], a famous Jesuit, gave a speech, oh, in the '60s to a group of Catholic journalists in Rome in which he said that communities inside the Church and out have an absolute right to information!
BOB GARFIELD:In my other life I work for Advertising Age which is a trade publication. It covers the advertising industry for the advertising industry but it's not of the advertising industry and sometimes it's difficult for the people we write about to understand that. They think we're somehow on their team. Are you "on the team" of the Catholic Church in America or are you truly and independent voice? What is that relationship?
TOM ROBERTS: The analog to the general press is limited. I mean there is a point at which we are-- you know, stakeholders in this enterprise called The Church. We are of it in a, in a very real way - at least a lot of the people who work there, and we - and, and again, that's part of the oddness of our niche. We are a specialty publication, and we do cover the Catholic Church because of you know -- part of that grew out of concern for the institution and a real love for it.
BOB GARFIELD: You're Catholic.
TOM ROBERTS: Mm-hm.
BOB GARFIELD: Has this challenged your faith?
TOM ROBERTS:It hasn't challenged my faith in the deepest aspects of-- of the faith I profess. It has certainly shaken my faith in the institution. I, I think we're at some, some manner of threshold. I can't put a name on it, but I think that the leadership of the Church at least in the United States is coming up against some very, very difficult truths.
BOB GARFIELD:One of the criticisms but nonetheless one of the realities of day to day journalism is there tends to be an us against them relationship between the press and the government. And I wondered if in reporting sensitive stories about the Church you find yourself regarding the Church of which you are a member as the enemy, and how does that challenge you as a journalist and how does it challenge you as a Catholic?
TOM ROBERTS: Yes, there, there are some instances where we are in a, in an adversarial role. I never think of people or the institution, even, as my "enemy." Part of the tragedy to the, the sex abuse story is that the Church which can exercise a really forceful role as a moral arbiter in the general culture, it can force the discussion on things, everything from, you know, the death penalty to abortion to nuclear weapons, and they, they have just - they're just draining themselves of credibility! You can't ask, you can't be a moral force in the culture and want to be a big player and get invited to testify, you know, before cong-- congressional committees and not expect to be-- scrutinized in your own activities. So you know, we want to serve as both the--the watchdog for all of that activity and the bulletin board for all of that activity, and so that's, that's where we place ourselves in the role. So I go to church every Sunday and, and-- and rest easy. It, it doesn't rattle my faith to be in that role.
BOB GARFIELD: Tom Roberts, thank you very much.
TOM ROBERTS: It's been a pleasure to be with you.
BOB GARFIELD: Tom Roberts is the editor of the National Catholic Reporter. [MUSIC]
March 22, 2002
BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Late this week, Pope John Paul II spoke out on the sexual abuse revelations that have recently scandalized the Church and forced Catholics to confront what the pontiff called "the mystery of evil." The pope beseeched church members to reconcile the pain of human weakness with faith in divine grace.
BOB GARFIELD:For the Catholic press, reconciling such conflicts is an ever-present challenge. Most of the 180 member publications of the Catholic Press Association are published by a local diocese under the authority of a bishop. As such, in reaching their aggregate 6 million readers, these publications find themselves working for the very institution on which they report. When scandal erupts, that conflict is particularly confounding. Owen McGovern, executive director of the Catholic Press Association, says his members do their best to be good Catholics and good journalists at the same time.
OWEN McGOVERN: Any sensitive issue that comes to light, you know, we report on it, and-- and quite in depth. I mean-- have you - this week is the, the best example of it. The Boston Pilot, the archdiocesan newspaper in Boston, just did a 28 page section on the situation involving pedophilia, and it's quite extensive. It's probably more extensive than you would find in the daily newspapers.
BOB GARFIELD:That's true. However it was reporting that was triggered by a scandal that first broke not in the diocesan newspaper but in the Boston Globe. Do Catholic newspapers do any of this investigative work themselves?
OWEN McGOVERN: You very seldom see a weekly newspaper break any story, mainly because of the, the, the time element. We have small staffs. We don't go out doing investigative work. But if something like this came to our attention of any of these sensitive issues, first of all our publishers of these newspapers happen to be bishops, and so first thing that would happen would be to find out--the-- what the reality is, what the truth is from the church's position. And we are Catholics, and our mission is education, communication, information and evangelization, and that's basically the role the Catholic press plays. We don't go around breaking stories-- but I would be-- less than honest if I said that if we did something like that, we would go to the church authorities and we would ask the questions with the intentions of writing the story, but on the same token, if the publisher who is the bishop took a different stance, then we would honor that stance as well.
BOB GARFIELD:Now what you've just described is certainly a, a gross beach of journalistic ethics. Are you saying that because your publisher in effect is the bishop for a given diocese that your responsibility is to keep him happy?
OWEN McGOVERN: That's not the case at all. Like I said, we educate, we inform, we try to communicate as best we can. But we also have a loyalty to the Church and that can't be denied, and I'd be the last one to deny that. And our loyalty to the Church is why we're in business. We're not in business to make a profit; we're not in business to sell newspapers to that extent. But we would like to offer our readers the truth and we would hope that the Church would feel the same way. And w-- and we don't do it in the name of journalism. We try to practice good journalism practices, but-- there is a - there is a fine line; we don't feel we're censored. There are cases I'm sure where bishops have more control over their paper than others, mainly because they want it.
BOB GARFIELD:There have been stories circulating and suspicions and conventional wisdom about sexual abuse by priests going back as far as I can remember. Hasn't your membership failed in its fundamental responsibility to its readers by not exploring these stories and trying to find out if they were true or not and then holding their diocesan leaders' feet to the fire to see that they're acting responsibly with regard to the, the parishioners and the parishioners' children?
OWEN McGOVERN: I would hope that none of my - the people that work in the Catholic Press Association as editors and journalists in general - would know that this was going on and, and wouldn't -- not only report it to the, the church authorities but report it to law enforcement as well!
BOB GARFIELD:Well then, going forward, what do you think is the role of -- under these circumstances -- in this new world we're living in of your member newspapers -- should they be more aggressive? Should they take the-- Church's assertions at face value, or should they dig deeper?
OWEN McGOVERN: They have access to the whole story. They don't have to write half the story. So I think they should dig to get the whole story, and then I think the Church right now, especially in its, in, in what it's going through, I think the Church will give that whole story-- where it didn't in the past. I think the, the newspaper will become more important than ever within the diocesan structure in order to make sure that they keep the people informed so that the people don't hear-- stories that may not be complete or may not even be completely accurate from other--media.
BOB GARFIELD:Since the bishop is the publisher of most of the papers that are your members, can journalism really take place in that environment when the organization that you're reporting on is actually running the newspaper that you are working for? It's almost as if I were expecting the Enron company newsletter to break the Enron scandal. It's just not going to happen.
OWEN McGOVERN: Yeah. There is, there is-- the fact that the bishop is the publisher. But ag--again to think that - you know - that this doesn't happen in the secular press -- there are numerous instances where advertisers have been influential -- I wish the secular news media were as, as pure as you would like 'em to be and I would like 'em to be. As far as from-- our concern - yeah - you know what? If the publisher says don't run the story - the story's not going to run. If that's-- a problem for some, then that's a problem. But the reality is the final judge are the Catholic readers who want to - they want to hear from the bishop - they trust the bishop - they want to know that - what's going on in the Church, and the Catholic newspaper is there to tell them.
BOB GARFIELD: Very well. Thank you very much.
OWEN McGOVERN: You're welcome.
BOB GARFIELD:Owen McGovern is executive director of The Catholic Press Association. For all the inherent conflicts of reporting about the church for members of the church, it's interesting to note that the Boston Globe was by no means the first national newspaper to report widespread sexual abuse among Catholic clergy and the Church's coverup thereof. That distinctions belongs to the National Catholic Reporter, an independent paper with no diocesan connection published in Kansas City, Missouri. It was the Reporter that first revealed the pedophilia scandal more than 17 years ago --and took a lot of heat for so doing. Among the accusations at the time says current editor Tom Roberts was that the paper was a journalistic Judas.
TOM ROBERTS: There were several different kinds of reactions. One was just what you said, that you're betraying the Church and destroying it. The other is that you're making too much of a few bad apples, you know, a few isolated cases. And, and-- others just said you know that, that this, this was - this simply should be taken care of quietly! That, that there's no business letting this news out. On our own board at the time-- there was a reaction by one board member asking for a vote of no, no confidence in the editor at the time, Tom Fox, who is now the publisher. He didn't get a second and he ultimately left the board. But there was, there were some real strains. It, it took I think a real act of courage to do that story and to keep after the story for so long.
BOB GARFIELD:A few months ago before the Boston Globe broke its story, Bishop Joseph Galanti [sp?] of Dallas who is head of the communications committee for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said that he believes that the Catholic press should not be out muckraking but should help unify the church and, and he said that aggressive reporting violates principles of charity and respect for human beings and can often be too heavily weighted with innuendo. Do you think that attitude still resides anywhere in the Church?
TOM ROBERTS: Oh, I think it does, and I think Bishop Galanti in this case was simply incorrect. It's just silly to blame the messenger. John Courtney Murray [sp?], a famous Jesuit, gave a speech, oh, in the '60s to a group of Catholic journalists in Rome in which he said that communities inside the Church and out have an absolute right to information!
BOB GARFIELD:In my other life I work for Advertising Age which is a trade publication. It covers the advertising industry for the advertising industry but it's not of the advertising industry and sometimes it's difficult for the people we write about to understand that. They think we're somehow on their team. Are you "on the team" of the Catholic Church in America or are you truly and independent voice? What is that relationship?
TOM ROBERTS: The analog to the general press is limited. I mean there is a point at which we are-- you know, stakeholders in this enterprise called The Church. We are of it in a, in a very real way - at least a lot of the people who work there, and we - and, and again, that's part of the oddness of our niche. We are a specialty publication, and we do cover the Catholic Church because of you know -- part of that grew out of concern for the institution and a real love for it.
BOB GARFIELD: You're Catholic.
TOM ROBERTS: Mm-hm.
BOB GARFIELD: Has this challenged your faith?
TOM ROBERTS:It hasn't challenged my faith in the deepest aspects of-- of the faith I profess. It has certainly shaken my faith in the institution. I, I think we're at some, some manner of threshold. I can't put a name on it, but I think that the leadership of the Church at least in the United States is coming up against some very, very difficult truths.
BOB GARFIELD:One of the criticisms but nonetheless one of the realities of day to day journalism is there tends to be an us against them relationship between the press and the government. And I wondered if in reporting sensitive stories about the Church you find yourself regarding the Church of which you are a member as the enemy, and how does that challenge you as a journalist and how does it challenge you as a Catholic?
TOM ROBERTS: Yes, there, there are some instances where we are in a, in an adversarial role. I never think of people or the institution, even, as my "enemy." Part of the tragedy to the, the sex abuse story is that the Church which can exercise a really forceful role as a moral arbiter in the general culture, it can force the discussion on things, everything from, you know, the death penalty to abortion to nuclear weapons, and they, they have just - they're just draining themselves of credibility! You can't ask, you can't be a moral force in the culture and want to be a big player and get invited to testify, you know, before cong-- congressional committees and not expect to be-- scrutinized in your own activities. So you know, we want to serve as both the--the watchdog for all of that activity and the bulletin board for all of that activity, and so that's, that's where we place ourselves in the role. So I go to church every Sunday and, and-- and rest easy. It, it doesn't rattle my faith to be in that role.
BOB GARFIELD: Tom Roberts, thank you very much.
TOM ROBERTS: It's been a pleasure to be with you.
BOB GARFIELD: Tom Roberts is the editor of the National Catholic Reporter. [MUSIC]
