If they only knew….
The media would be stunned by the brilliance and the leadership of the man who is pope, if they’re capable of taking the time or even seeing it when the perfection of his argument (in the classical sense) is clear. They’d better bone up, because his visit to America is coming soon, and they’re still in the dark. Carl Olson takes on just one of the many examples at Ignatius Insight.
What happens when an American journalist with a typically dualistic “conservative vs. liberal”, politics-are-everything perspective tries to understand Pope Benedict XVI? He becomes a bit befuddled, as does Gerry Stern, in a piece posted by USA Today titled, “Benedict still a mystery after 3 years as pope”…
The headline is a giveaway. They don’t know Benedict still, never did, and always held the image of him as the Vatican’s “doctrinal hardliner”, which I recall vividly from all the reporting in the first days of his election to the papacy.
Recently, I was on a teleconference with the bishops tasked with informing the media of the particulars of the pope’s visit to America in April, and Bishop Donald Wuerl started it off well with a commentary on “the thought of Benedict XVI”, to help journalists get to know him better. During the Q&A afterward, one reporter said Pope Benedict is arriving in an election year between a pro-life candidate and two “pro-choice” candidates, “and he’s arriving in the world capital of soundbites”. So, she asked the bishops, “what can be done that he won’t be taken out of context?”
“A soundbite answer,” said Wuerl, goodnaturedly, to much laughter.
It’s the media’s responsibility to practice sound and truthful journalism, to do their homework and when that requires some extra reading and study and background research, then do that and be prepared to not put Pope Benedict into soundbites. Like they did with his Regensburg address.
Wuerl said:
Media have an enormous responsibility to translate to the listening public what is happening, in a very limited time and space. Things going on around him will be the filter through what he says and does is seen. I assume there’s an awful lot of maturity among our people, and the media. The challenge is to be accurate.
The mature media will be. The bishops are trying to help.
