From calling Pope Benedict’s graceful stance of leaving the office as “calling it quits” to putting baseless story about Pope Joan – it all points to CNN’s deeply antagonistic view about the church.
Source/Credit: The Northwestern
By Saad Ahmad | Mar. 19, 2013
I am not a Catholic but I was really embarrassed by the so called coverage of the election of the pope by some media outlets – especially CNN.
First let us get an understanding of who are the Catholics – if Catholicism were a religion by itself it would be world’s second largest religion and it is the single largest denomination of Christianity in US. Just because of their sheer number, it demands deference and respect – especially when we are talking about one of the most important events in the Church – election of a new pope.
Religious dogma is not above reproach and we should have candid discussion in an open society but there is a time and place for everything. To treat the conclave like a horse race was demeaning and the subtext of the coverage was openly antagonizing to the Catholics.
From calling Pope Benedict’s graceful stance of leaving the office as “calling it quits” to putting baseless story about Pope Joan – it all points to CNN’s deeply antagonistic view about the church. Having Anderson Cooper cover it was an obvious attempt to scandalize the event but I am glad that the church did not fall into their trap. CNN follows the typical “yellow journalism” technique of putting out scandalous headlines like “Humble pope has complicated past” and then quoting nameless sources to lay down baseless accusations and then also saying that these have not been proven.
These media outlets need to understand how revered a pope is for Catholics. Would they consider it appropriate to say stuff like that about someone’s parents or children without reasonable credibility?
As I said earlier I am not a Christian and I have written critically about certain church positions in the past but such discourse must happen with civility and deference. If you want to engage about certain church positions – it should not be discouraged but do not treat the Holy Father as a punching bag for every controversial point of view. It is also unreasonable to define that a litmus test for “reasonableness” or “humility” is that the Holy Father contradicts every church position on day one.
The influence of anti-religious elements in such media outlets is obvious and they disguise it as “free speech” and “open dialogue” when it is neither. Maybe they are embarrassed to admit that while atheists have killed more in the last hundred years than all of the so called religious wars in history but have not been able to elect a single “pope”.
In my opinion all Catholics should call their cable providers to not carry CNN – that would certainly get the message across.
Guest columnist Saad Ahmad is a former community member of the Northwestern’s editorial board, email columnists@thenorthwestern.com
Read original post here: US: CNN fails in papal coverage
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