It’s always interesting when you read two different, allegedly objective news stories and come away with contrary impressions of the state of the facts.
Take THIS ONE and THIS ONE as examples.
Both are covering the current controversy regarding Pope Benedict’s remarks on Islam, but they convey significantly different impressions of the state of things.
For example, the first article–by Reuters–has this hopeful note:
One of the few signs that the crisis may have peaked came from Iran’s hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told NBC television in New York that now that the Pope has taken back his statement "there is no problem."
That makes it sound like the controversy may have peaked, and it is a quite significant thing when a hate-inflamer like Ahmadinejad is saying that there is no problem. That sounds like a signal that he will not be using his government-controlled hate press to further inflame passion on this the way he did with the Danish cartoons.
But the second article–by The Evening Standard–conveys a different impression:
Pope Benedict faces a growing chorus of demands to make an unequivocal apology for remarks seen as portraying Islam as a violent faith, despite attempts by Western leaders and churchmen to defuse the crisis.
That makes it sound like the controversy is still building.
Admittedly, these matters are subjective and hard to gauge–but then THAT’S THE POINT, isn’t it? Unless the pieces are clearly labelled as opinion or analysis then they’re supposed to be objectively sticking ot the facts–or so the MSM would have us believe.
Then there’s another matter where the two pieces convey a different impression of the facts, and here the contrast between the two news services is reversed. According to Reuters,
In Turkey, Mehmet Ali Agca, who tried to kill Pope John Paul in 1981, warned Benedict not to make a planned visit to the country in late November, saying his life would be in danger.
"As someone who knows these matters well, I say your life is in danger. Don’t come to Turkey," Agca, who is serving a sentence for the killing of a newspaper editor in the 1970s, said in comments released in a statement by his lawyer.
From this one would think that Mehmet Ali Agca is sincerely concerned about Pope Benedict’s wellbeing (which he may indeed be) and issuing what could be sound advice (and it may indeed be) based on being an apparently sane and balanced individual with a realistic view of things, whatever his past crimes may have been.
In fact, Mehmet Ali Agca is a dangerously unbalanced fantasy-prone individual who regularly makes wild, non-reality-based statements that apparently come from his own delusional inner life.
While The Evening Standard doesn’t make as blunt (and as evaluative) a statement as I just did, it does at least report the facts in a way that allows the reader to infer what a crazyman Agca is:
In his two page letter to leading Italian Rome based daily La Repubblica, Agca, who was a member of the Turkish terrorist cell the White Wolves, wrote: "Pope Ratzinger listen to someone who knows these things very well.
"Your life is in danger. You absolutely must not come to Turkey. Pope Benedict you must know that between 1980 and 2000 I was in contact with various Western intelligence services and with the Vatican.
"In those twenty tears I learnt many things and I came into possession of many classified secrets."
The letter closed with Agca imploring Pope Benedict to resign for his own safety he wrote: "For your own welfare you must make a grand gesture of honour and resign.
"Then you must return to your native land (Germany) and in your place an Italian cardinal can be elected Pope, possibly (cardinal Dionigi) Tettamanzi or (cardinal Tarcisio) Bertone.
"Then the Vatican should become a centre of peace and fraternity. The world has a need of this it does not need hatred and vendetta."
While it’s praiseworthy that The Evening Standard reported the facts regarding Agca’s current letter more fully and thus put the reader into a better position to evaluate the sanity of the man, it was still writing the piece according to a scare script, pouring the story into a pre-formed mold and to my mind still constitutes shallow reporting since Agca has repeatedly said totally bizarre things and the reader is not informed of this fact.
If it was going to make Agca the centerpiece of its story, it at least should have interviewed someone who could offer an assessment of the reliability of the man.
For example, shortly before the death of John Paul II he gave an interview with La Repubblica, in which he asserted:
In the 1980’s, certain Vatican supporters believed that I was the new messiah and to free me they organized all the intrigue about Emanuela Orlandi and the other incidents they won’t reveal" [SOURCE].
Meanwhile, the Vatican Information Service released the following text from Pope Benedict’s Wednesday audience concerning his speech at the University of Regensburg:
"I chose the theme," he said, "of the relationship between faith and reason. In order to introduce my audience to the dramatic nature and current importance of the subject, I quoted some words from a Christian-Muslim dialogue from the 14th century in which the Christian – the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus – presented to his Muslim interlocutor, in a manner we find incomprehensibly brusque, the problem of the relationship between faith and violence.
"This quotation, unfortunately, has lent itself to misunderstandings. However, to an attentive reader of my text it is clear that in no way did I wish to make my own the negative words pronounced by the medieval emperor, and that their polemical content does not express my personal convictions. My intentions were quite otherwise: on the basis of what Manuel II subsequently said in a positive sense … concerning the reason that must guide us in transmitting the faith, I wished to explain that not religion and violence, but religion and reason, go together.
"The theme of my talk was, then, the relationship between faith and reason," he added. "I wished to call for a dialogue of the Christian faith with the modern world and for dialogue between all cultures and religions. I hope that at various moments of my visit – when, for example, in Munich I underlined how it important it is to respect what is sacred for others – what emerged was my deep respect for all the great religions, and in particular for Muslims who ‘worship the one God,’ and with whom we are committed to promoting ‘peace, liberty, social justice and moral values for the benefit of all humanity.’
"I trust, therefore, that following the initial reactions, my words at the University of Regensburg may constitute an impulse and encouragement towards positive, even self-critical, dialogue both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith" [SOURCE].
Regarding the Wednesday audience, the Reuters piece noted this significant fact:
[A]s is customary, the Pope still was driven among the crowd standing on the back of an open jeep as it passed among tens of thousands of people in the square.
Which is one of the reasons I say B16 isn’t afraid to be martyred.
Despite what happened in that same square when Mehmet Ali Agca–a Muslim–tried to kill John Paul II, and despite the imminent reasonability of using a bullet-proof popemobile for security purposes, one of the first things B16 did in office was return to the practice of using an open vehicle–a clear signal that he is willing to accept the risks that this entails in order to be more accessible to those he is trying to serve.
Recently I had the great pleasure of reading Tim Powers’ latest novel, 
