COMMENTARY: News pages are beginning to resemble the comics

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.) UNDATED _ This is the year of fictionalized news. A writer for the New […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ This is the year of fictionalized news.


A writer for the New Republic makes up conversations and incidents. A columnist for the Boston Globe creates characters. The Cincinnati Enquirer pays $10 million for misreporting on Chiquita Bananas. Stephen Brill exposes how much of the Washington press corps assault on the president during the first phase of the Monica Lewinsky dust-up flirted with fiction. And CNN makes up a story about the use of sarin nerve gas to kill American defectors in Vietnam.

The issue is no longer whether one can distinguish between the news and the editorial pages, it’s now whether one can distinguish between the news pages and the comics.

CNN is a particularly slippery operation.

Their unsubstantiated story about nerve gas recalls to mind their manufactured charge of sex abuse against Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago several years ago. Having collected interviews during that summer from a number of us who had warned about clergy sex abuse in general and from the cardinal about his reforms in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the CNN team stumbled upon Stephen Cook, a young man who was preparing to sue the Archdiocese of Cincinnati for sexual abuse by a priest.

Somehow Cook expanded his charges to include Bernardin. And the focus of the CNN program shifted from what had been promised to be an intelligent and responsible discussion of clergy sex abuse to an expose of the cardinal’s”Fall from Grace,”as the program was called. Solemn publicity preceded the event for several days.

Did CNN directly induce Cook to discover repressed memories for the program? I doubt that. The excitement of the program created its own pressures. But CNN’s contribution was that in their rush to destroy the cardinal they did not take a hard look at the evidence. The same with the sarin gas story: In its enthusiasm to assault the Pentagon, CNN didn’t look carefully enough at the evidence.

Instead, both reporting teams acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

There is a postscript to the story. After Cook’s retraction, a high executive at CNN called Bernardin and expressed something like an apology. He offered the cardinal air time to discuss his emotional and spiritual reactions, his forgiveness of Cook, and his reform policies in Chicago. Bernardin called me and read a list of the questions he had jotted down while talking to the executive. They were all harmless. What did I think? he asked. The questions are fine I replied. But don’t trust them.

On the air the questions were utterly different. A distinguished and uncomfortable interviewer began by asking whether it was true Bernardin had called a press conference to deny the charges even before they appeared on the air. What relevance that had to the falsity of the charges and the guilt of CNN was not apparent. Somehow the implication was that if Bernardin had called such a conference he was guilty of a subterfuge.

At first the question baffled the cardinal. He was not prepared for it. Nor did he see how it mattered. In fact, he said finally, he had not. What really happened, the cardinal said, was that upon returning home he was met by a group of reporters and he answered their questions. The interviewer squirmed awkwardly, tried a few similar questions, and then backed off.


Were both reporting groups”sincere,”as defenders of the sarin story contend? If the question is rephrased to mean did they persuade themselves their story was true, then the answer is probably yes. If, on the other hand, the question means did they, in their rush to destroy someone by uncovering scandal, indulge in immoral and irresponsible self deception, then the answer has to be that their sincerity was phony.

The self-deception of media crusaders who aspire to the fame and fortune acquired by Woodward and Bernstein in the Watergate case has infected the ethics of the entire journalistic profession. CNN is only the most obvious example. There is no sign the infection is going away.

Don’t trust them. Ever. They may be out to destroy you.

DEA END GREELEY

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