Just before the Dan Rather scandal broke, I was preparing to write a post about the bias and incompetence of the media. It seemed that RaTHergate was making the point for me, so I decided to wait.
Sunday morning I read an editorial that made me decide to not wait any more.
I know that the bias and incompetence of the news media won’t come as . . . well, news to anyone, but my experience this year has given me new insight into the depth of the media’s bias and incompetence. As a result of the Catholic Answers voters guide, I’ve had to give tons of media interviews (some of them linked here). I thus get put in the fascinating position of (a) knowing what I actually said to the reporter and (b) seeing what the reporter attributes to me in print.
Lemme tell ya: It ain’t even close!
It amazes me how badly reporters butcher things. I’ll try to write a post soon that provides some detail on how The Game works, but for now let me focus on one particular editorial:
Will a Kerry vote send faithful straight to hell? by Bob Keeler of New York’s Newsday.
Here’s how he opens the piece:
Karl Keating says I’m going to hell. And we haven’t even met.
This is a “grabber” meant to get the reader’s attention and engross him in reading the article. Fine. Grabbers are good. But . . . here’s the deal . . . grabbers have to be accurate or, if the grabber involves a little hyperbole, you have to correct the misimpression immediately.
This grabber isn’t accurate, and it creates a misimpression that is not immediately corrected: namely, that Karl Keating says Bob Keeler and people like him are going to hell. Karl is thus immediately painted as a kind of vicious extremist, an impression that is reinforced by the knife-twisting comment “And we haven’t even met.”
Keeler then states:
Keating runs “Catholic Answers,” a conservative lay group based in San Diego. Its Web site, catholic.com, offers a voter’s guide to this election, with five “non-negotiable” issues: abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem-cell research, human cloning and gay marriage.
In a published interview about the guide [in an unnamed competitor’s newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News], Keating has said: “It’s a serious sin to vote for moral evils, especially those that are so clearly opposed to the church’s teachings.”
In other words, vote for a candidate with the wrong views on these issues, and you’re well on your way to hell. Since I plan to vote for John Kerry for president, Keating’s argument presents me – and millions of Catholics like me – a pretty bleak prognosis for the life to come.
This is a gross distortion, and Keeler knows it.
How do I know that? . . . You’ll see.
Keeler goes on to state:
Catholic Answers doesn’t actually mention President George W. Bush or Sen. John Kerry, but you’d have to be pretty obtuse not to get the idea.
This charge is flat wrong. If he had been doing his job, Keeler would have called Catholic Answers to find out our position on questions like whether we’d say he is going to hell or whether we are supporting any particular candidates. Being an editorialist doesn’t give you license to just sit back and spout off half-baked conjectures when it’s easy enough to pick up the phone and ask whether your conjecture is correct or not. Failing to check easily checkable facts is what is known in the business as “reckless disregard for the truth,” and that is what Keeler displayed by failing to pick up the phone.
Keeler is an editorialist, and being an editorialist is different than being a reporter. Being an editorialist means that you get to give opinions, but it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to check facts any more. A good editorialist checks the factuality of his claims before he makes them in print, but a good editorialist is not what Bob Keeler showed himself to be in this piece.
I’m pleased to report that not all Newsday people show the same reckless disregard for the truth that Keeler does.
In fact, a reporter from Newsday did call us . . . the day after Keeler’s piece ran (though I wouldn’t know Keeler’s piece even existed for another two days). Keeler didn’t get the answers I gave that reporter . . . because he didn’t call.
With the reporter who did call, I laboriously pointed out that Catholic Answers is a non-partisan organization that does not endorse or disendorse any candidate or party. I explained that the guide was written before the election and before it was known who the candidates were. I explained that the voters guide offers principles to be used in all races (and all elections, for that matter, not just this one), and it is not directed at this year’s presidential race. This last point is clearly made in the voters guide itself, which raises questions about whether Keeler even read the guide before spouting off.
Keeler’s insinuation that Catholic Answers is endorsing a candidate if flatly inaccurate. I explained to the reporter who didn’t display Keeler’s reckless disregard for the truth, Catholic Answers explains the principles of the Catholic faith, including the moral principles involved in voting, and that it is up to the individual to apply these principles to particular races. I explained that this is strictly a matter of principle, and if every politician in the world decided to adopt the principles enumerated in the voters guide, that would be just great. In fact, as I pointed out, the guide expressly states that one should not vote based on party affiliation.
Keeler next states:
Other interest groups aren’t so delicate. For one example, check out the nasty Kerry cartoon on the National Rifle Association’s Political Victory Fund site, which brags about defeating Al Gore in 2000 and slobbers over the chance to bury Kerry.
Or take a look at the Natural Resources Defense Council site, which isn’t a voter’s guide, but offers an overwhelmingly negative assessment of Bush’s polluter-friendly record on the environment.
What does this have to do with anything? I don’t see any “religion and politics” theme here. Keeler has lunged away from his principal theme in order to go after purely secular concerns.
Of course, one knows what he is trying to do here. He is trying to create a guilt-by-association smear against Catholic Answers by placing it alongside groups who comment on particular candidates in a way that Catholic Answers does not.
The tactic would be less blatant if he was able to cite interest groups that were plausibly associated with Catholic Answers–i.e., other Catholic ones–but Keeler apparently can’t name any and must resort to citing secular interest groups that have made the kind of comments he wants via suggestion to tar Catholic Answers with even though by his own admission Catholic Answers hasn’t committed this kind of action.
Why bring up irrelevant secular groups with no connection to Catholic Answers if you aren’t trying some kind of guilt-by-manufactured-association smear?
Keeler then states:
Not everyone, of course, has the resources of the NRA or the NRDC. Take the folks who created the votingcatholic.org site. Though I’ve never exchanged a word with Karl Keating, I do know some of these smart and committed young people, through the College of the Holy Cross and Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement.
These are not crazies or heretics. They take their lead, in fact, from this quote from the nation’s Catholic bishops: “The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular element to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good.”
A-ha! So Keeler is associated with the votingcatholic.org folks, a bunch of college students who created their site specifically because they didn’t like the Catholic Answers voters guide.
Keeler certainly describes them in glowing terms. He emphasizes his personal relationship with them, he describes them as “smart and committed young people,” he associates them with institutions that presumably will be looked upon favorably by his New York audience, he assures us that “these are not crazies or heretics,” and he portrays them as simply furthering the goals of the U.S. bishops (a disingenuous perception that the votingcatholic.org folks studiously seek to maintain).
The contrast is thus between warm, fuzzy young people who I personally know and cold, prickly bad guy who I don’t know and didn’t bother to call so that he couldn’t contradict the charges I wanted to make against him and thus deflate my editorial.
Keeler then devotes three full paragraphs to unfavorably comparing Catholic Answers’ voters guide to an entire web site, praising the latter for including issues that couldn’t possibly fit into a 2000 word booklet. He concludes by saying:
It’s [votingcatholic.org] an excellent site to help Catholics decide.
Despite the fact that, as Karl pointed out, votingcatholic.org seriously misrepresents Catholic teaching on abortion (scroll down).
Now up to this point, what’s been the impression created by Keeler concerning what Karl thinks about who is going to hell?
That’s right: Keeler has not only suggested but stated flat out that Karl thinks people like him are going to hell. He did so not on the basis of an actual quote from Karl saying this but by stitching together things said in different places so that they suggested the conclusion he wanted.
He didn’t ask Karl about going to hell to see if his conclusion was correct or not, so he presents it in an unqualified form, without any of the “Only God knows a person’s conscience” qualifiers that Karl always answers with whenever directly asked if someone is going to hell.
But the Newsday reporter who did call asked me this question. He specifically asked if people who vote for Kerry are going to hell (perhaps because he’d read Keeler’s screed before calling). I answered him with all the nuance that the Church expects on a question like that. If Keeler had bothered to call, he would have gotten the same kind of answer and it would have deflated the central charge he wanted to make in his editorial.
To keep that from happening, he chose not to call in reckless disregard for the truth.
But after letting the charge that Karl thinks Keeler is going to hell marinate in the minds of his readers for 550 words of his 750-word editorial, Keeler then decides to put in some fire insurance for himself, lest Catholic Answers vociferously denounce his central assertion.
Three-quarters of the way through the article, Keeler says this:
To be fair to Keating, his voter’s guide does offer an exception: “In some political races, each candidate takes a wrong position on one or more issues involving non-negotiable moral principles. In such a case you may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation, or you may choose to vote for no one.”
So despite the impression that Keeler has studiously sought to create for the last 550 words, Karl does NOT, in fact, say that everyone who votes for Kerry is going to hell. If there are situations in which one can vote for candidates who are wrong on some of the five non-negotiables then obviously you wouldn’t go to hell for doing so in such situations. Therefore the comment from the San Jose Mercury News was a general statement of principle that did not admit the conclusion Keeler drew from it.
Keeler knew this—because he admits it by quoting the voters guide’s statement indicating this—but he chose to bury the fact at the end of his hit-piece editorial after striving for 550 words to create the opposite impression.
Keeler then states:
Keating would argue that only his five issues are truly non-negotiable, but many Catholics also include such matters as war and peace, the slaughter of civilians, the death penalty, and caring for the poor.
Keeler once again is flat wrong, and because he didn’t call.
I had a lengthy discussion with the reporter who did call about the principles that were used to select the five non-negotiables mentioned in the guide and why the other issues Keeler names aren’t included. There were two main criteria: (1) There has to be an official statement of Catholic teaching indicating that Catholics can never support the issue and (2) it has to be an issue under active discussion in America.
Keeler is wrong therefore to say that “Keating would argue that only his five issues are truly non-negotiable.” This is flat wrong. There are many issues, and Karl would acknowledge this, that are also non-negotiable but that are not included in the guide because they are not under discussion in America.
Keeler himself names one of them: the slaughter of civilians. No American politician is advocating slaughtering civilians, as was done with the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the firebombing of Dresden. If politicians were advocating the slaughter of civilians, that issue would be the sixth non-negotiable. In fact, Karl himself has repeatedly written in print about the evil of those bombings and the fact that they were not supportable by Catholic moral teaching. In fact, he’s taken heat from Catholics who obstinately disagreed. The only reason that this issue isn’t mentioned in the voters guide is that the conscience of the nation has progressed enough in this area that no politician in his right mind would advocate such a thing at present.
Keeler may be right that “many Catholics also include such matters as war and peace” and “the death penalty” among non-negotiables, but as I explained to the reporter who bothered calling, these Catholics would be out of line with Church teaching.
In fact, I quoted to him Cardinal Ratzinger’s statement that there can be a “legitimate diversity of opinion” among Catholics on the issues of whether to go to war or whether to apply the death penalty. Yet Keeler tries to encourage Catholics to think that these may rightly be regarded as non-negotiables when the Church’s chief doctrinal officer says otherwise.
Further, I pointed out to the reporter who called that the Catechism of the Catholic Church itself points out that there are situations where war is just and that the state does have the right to use capital punishment. Yet Keeler wants to have Catholics think that these issues are non-negotiable though the Church’s official, worldwide catechism says otherwise.
The other issue Keeler names–the care of the poor–is indeed a non-negotiable in the sense that society has an obligation through some means to care for the basic needs of those who are unable to provide for themselves, but this obligation is sufficiently general that it does not result in a particular governmental policy that must be supported, and bishops have pointed out that Catholics may legitimately take different positions on how the poor are best helped. Thus, as I pointed out to the Newsday reporter who called, Catholics may legitimately think that the best way to help the poor is to lower taxes so that businesses will create more jobs or they may hold that the best way to help the poor is to raise taxes so that a government program can be created to help the poor. The generalized obligation to help the poor thus does not result in a non-negotiable “all Catholics must support this policy” view, as the subject of abortion and the other non-negotiables mentioned in the voters guide do.
Keeler then states:
So, even by Keating’s standards, I feel comfortable that Kerry is far less dangerous to human life than Bush. Even Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the church’s chief doctrinal officer, gives comfort to Catholics like me, who don’t like Kerry’s pro-choice stand: He says Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates, if they vote despite that position, not because of it, and if there are “proportionate reasons.” My reasons: Bush has averted few, if any, abortions, but killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.
Hmmmmm. . . . So it’s okay to quote Cardinal Ratzinger as an authority when he says something Keeler likes (like there are situations where one can vote for such candidates), but not when he says something Keeler doesn’t like (like war and the death penalty are not non-negotiables). Presumably Keeler knows about the latter statement because it is in the very same memorandum that Keeler quotes on this point. So he either knows about it or is so reckless in his disregard for the truth that he can’t be bothered to read the source he is quoting!
In fact, with the reporter who called, I had a substantial discussion of what kind of proportionate reason is needed to vote for a pro-abort president. I walked him through the logic showing that the election of such an individual would result in an average of nine million additional murders by extending the abortion holocaust, so you’d need a reason proportionate to that.
Individual voters will have to decide for themselves whether there is such a reason in the present election, but if there is one, it certainly isn’t the lame-o reason Keeler gives: “Bush has averted few, if any, abortions, but killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.”
There is no doubt that the abortion holocaust would be extended by the election of a pro-abort president and result in millions of more deaths that would overmatch by three orders of magnitude thousands of civilians who have died due to collateral damage. Keeler also neglects the different moral characters of the actions, as abortion involves the deliberate killing of an innocent and is never justified whereas collateral damage involves the non-deliberate killing of innocents and therefore can be permitted for “proportionate reasons” under the law of double-effect.
Keeler then finishes with the utter irrelevancy:
Bottom line: There are plenty of one-issue voter’s guides, but Catholics and non-Catholics alike should devote the time to studying a wider array of issues before voting.
As if five non-negotiables amounted to a one issue voter guide! Keeler is in such mental thralldom to standard liberal talking points that his ability to count has been impaired! In the mathematics that apply to the universe I live in, five issues is “a wider array of issues” than one issue, but Keeler is determined to suggest that Catholic Answers is urging single issue voting because that’s the standard liberal talking point whenever abortion gets mentioned.
Let me offer my own bottom line on this affair: Neither Karl nor I would say that Keeler is definitely going to hell, but the number of journalistic sins he committed here (displaying reckless disregard for the truth by not calling to check easily checkable claims, misleading the reader for three-quarters of the piece before making an implicit admission that the central claim of the piece is wrong, and misleading his readers about the teaching of the Catholic Church on various issues) certainly didn’t help matters.
Keeler’s editorial brings to mind the biblical saying: “Ye have not because ye ask not.”
The reporter who did call brings to mind the saying: “Ask and ye shall receive.”
Keeler wrote a barking moonbat editorial because he didn’t bother checking his facts, and the Newsday reporter who did call got what amounted to a point-by-point refutation of everything Keeler said in his editorial (without me even knowing of its existence at the time).
There’s a word for journalists who show the kind of reckless disregard for the truth that Keeler did.
That word is “hack.”
And that’s exactly what Bob Keeler showed himself to be by writing this piece.
His bio line says that he is an editorialist who used to be a religion reporter.
In a world of Jayson Blairs and Dan RaTHers, perhaps Newsday should go back and examine the articles Keeler wrote when he was a religion reporter to see if he showed the same reckless disregard for the truth back then.
(BTW, What’s mine is mine.)
(Sigh.)
