While “I do know reporters and editors whom I admire, and whose fairness and skill I commend,” said the archbishop, “I think the deficiencies in today’s coverage of religion are too real to ignore.”
The “Christian story now told in mainstream media” depicts the faith as “a backward social force and a menace to the liberty of their fellow citizens.”
“One of the worst habits many Catholics had at the start of the clergy sex abuse crisis, including many bishops, was to minimize a very grave problem,” he said. “But news media show many of the same patterns of denial, vanity, obstinacy and institutional defensiveness in dealing with criticism of their own failures.”
“Freedom of the press clearly includes the right to question the actions and motives of religious figures and institutions,” Archbishop Chaput noted. “But freedom doesn’t excuse prejudice or poor handling of serious material, especially people’s religious convictions. What’s new today is the seeming collusion – or at least an active sympathy – between some media organizations and journalists, and political and sexual agendas hostile to traditional Christian beliefs.”
“When this happens,” he underscored, “the results are bad for everybody.”
“It’s no accident that freedom of religion and freedom of the press are both named – in that order – in the First Amendment. The country’s founders believed that protecting these two freedoms would be vital to the American experiment,” the archbishop said. “They saw that a self-governing people needs truthful information and sensible opinion from sources other than the state. They also believed that morality grounded in religious belief is fundamental to forming virtuous people able to govern themselves.”
“Knowledge professionals have their own kind of orthodoxy,” he added. “They place a high premium on their own skill and autonomy. This has consequences. It predisposes them to be uncomfortable with, and even hostile toward, any claims of revealed truth, religious institutions, traditions, doctrines and authority.”
“The point I want to leave you with is this: Journalism is a 'knowledge profession.' But like any other profession, the work of journalism doesn't necessarily translate into self-knowledge or self-criticism. And any lasting service to the common good demands both. Journalism has its own unstated orthodoxies. It has its own prejudices. And when they go unacknowledged and uncorrected – as they too often seem to do – they can diminish our public life.”