(Preface: Apparently a lot of people are concerned that the last entry somehow is somehow related to
Anyway, I started writing this yesterday and it kind of just kept going. I tried to keep it from getting speechy, butwhen I get started on an essay there’s no stopping me! Enjoy, if you want, or
From today’s issue of Newsweek:
| “The hallmark of a free and democratic society is freedom of the press. Take it away, and you would leavepoliticians, financial hawks and whoever else has things to hide free to hoodwink the public. The very thought of agagged press sends chills down my spine.” |
That’s a reader response to Anna Quindlen’s column of Feb. 18, called “A Conspiracy of Notebooks” (I’d link you tothat, but–ironically, as it turns out–there’s a subscription fee to view back issues). It’s a very true statement,and I sympathize. First Amendment rights are up there with abortion and death penalty issues, for me, and they compriseone of the reasons I voted for Dave Barry. The free press is an important thing. I only wish we had one.
This isn’t going to turn into a rant about the “liberal media”–there is a bias to the left in most of the press, butit’s easy enough to filter out once you know where to look. I wish the same could be said for the sheer right-wingstupidity of, say, MallardFillmore, but that’s another rant all by itself. What I’m trying to get to is this: our news sources may be mostlyfree of political ties, but they’re still very much in the thrall of sales concerns. And that’s what produces thingslike the current Newsweek cover story, from the same issue as the quote above:
What happened to those people as children is a horrible, horrible thing. John Geoghan is a sick man beyond thethreshhold of therapeutic help. Cardinal Law made the same mistake too many times when dealing with him, and it’s longpast time for Geoghan to be separated from the rest of society. These three sentences are the meat of a good newsstory, ready to be fleshed out with statistics and related accounts.
The article has these. Unfortunately, it also has a great deal more. Judging by the pictures in the article, allCatholics are grim-faced, white-haired men; after they grow up, they become lapsed Catholics, and thus normal people.Judging by the lead-ins, sex is a concept entirely alien to Catholic thought (reproducing, as we do, by mitosis). Thearticle alleges an “epidemic” of abuse, then goes on to examine exactly one case, lightly touching on two more.Apparently, this leads to conclusions like “secrecy and silence have always characterized the Catholic Church.”
There is nothing about my church that is secretive or silent, and there hasn’t been in my lifetime, and I have towonder if authors Lisa Miller and David France have been inside a Catholic church since 1963. My church, to me, meanssinging and laughter during baptisms and yes, ritual–the power and communion inherent in call and response. I’ve nevereven said the words “church secret,” and I’ve never heard anyone else say them, and I doubt I ever will.
I freely admit I’m reacting to this because the article is offensive to me. It implies false and insulting things abouta group to which I belong, and that upsets me, and I’m reacting where I might not, were it about another group–this isa human thing. But I’m also trying to illustrate the principles at work here, and the central irony of the issue ofNewsweek sitting next to me now.
Miller and France wrote the article the way they did–and the magazine produced it the same way–because it’s going toget good (controversial) response, and sell well. This, too, is a human thing. And a commercially driven presscannot, by its very nature, be entirely free.
“The liberal media” is an overused and mostly false phrase, and one to which Anna Quindlen doesn’t respond very well.It’s a reputation based on little fact and perpetuated by shortsighted people, but the same goes for the thingsNewsweek said about my church this week. And the only way to end stereotypes about you is to stop indulging instereotyping yourself.
