March 30, 2010
Catholic League president Bill Donohue accuses MSNBC of libeling Pope Benedict XVI:
Go to the home page of MSNBC and click on "World News." From there click on "Americas." Next click on the article, "Losing Their Religion? Catholicism in Turmoil." [Direct Link, here] Scroll down and in the "Click for Related Content" section there is an article entitled, "Pope Describes Touching Boys: I Went Too Far," here. [They've changed the title of the article since this came up, good show Bill Donahue] Clicking on this piece takes the reader to an article about a homosexual German priest who had sex with males in the 1980s. It says absolutely nothing about the pope. Yet MSNBC paints Pope Benedict XVI as a child molester in the tease to the article.
A retraction, and a sincere apology, are in order. They should also investigate how this happened and who is responsible.
Contact NBC news president Steve Capus: steve.capus@nbc.com
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
MSNBC Deceitfully Attempts to Portray Holy Father as a Molester
We've long maintained that Bill Donahue is ineffective. He didn't identify the provinence of the New York Times schmear on Pope Benedict or its own perfidious source, but to his credit, he has identified another problem article. We would add that the press is getting increasingly desperate. Bill Donahue reports:
This link now reads 'Priest describes' not 'Pope describes' and this Google search effectively documents notations of MSNBC's original link text:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.com/search?q=%2B%22Pope+describes+touching+boys%22
One could write it off, and how quickly it was changed, as a clerical error, but isn't that just the safest means of attack?
Given that the story that headline linked to had nothing in it to suggest the pope's involvement, it seems fair to conclude that it was an editing error and once it was called out, they made the correction. I see that the article where that headline appeared also has an "editors note" that includes an apology. Not sure we should cling to the conclusion this was a deliberate "attack" or "smear." There are far more insidious, and less embarrassing, ways to go after the Church and or Holy Father.
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