“Amen,” to what Rod Dreher said

September 12, 2012 By

Tragically, this sad post speaks for itself. Please note that Rod “friend of this blog” Dreher has confirmed the key element of the story with the man who is at the center of it.

I will, however, share one relevant personal anecdote.

Years and years ago, when I was leaving college, I had a job interview with a major church-related wire service. I went into the interview knowing that I urgently needed to ask this editor one question: “Is the work you do journalism or public relations?”

We came back from lunch and started talking. One of the first things the editor asked me was, “Do you think what we do is journalism or public relations?”

I responded by telling him that I had come to town to ask him precisely that question. He smiled and said, “Well, I asked you first.”

Needless to say, I was silent for a while. I knew that, in effect, my answer would represent a kind of turning point in my work, potentially closing a symbolic door.

“I think that you think the work you do is journalism,” I said, “but the people who sign your paycheck think that it’s public relations.”

Precisely, he said. Could I live with that?

I said, “No.”

So click here to read all of Dreher’s post entitled, “Shooting The Messenger,” about the latest sad, even tragic twist in the story of The National Catholic Register and its now infamous interview with Father Benedict Groeschel. Click here for a previous GetReligion post on coverage of this story.

Here is how Dreher’s post opens, and closes:

Several readers have e-mailed to say that John Burger, the veteran National Catholic Register writer and editor who conducted that controversial interview with Fr. Benedict Groeschel (it’s been removed from the site; story about the controversy here) was fired by the EWTN-owned newspaper because of it. I confirmed with Mr. Burger that he was let go because of the incident, but he did not wish to comment further.

This is disgraceful on the Register‘s part, just disgraceful. I hope somebody in Catholic media with a job to offer will contact John Burger and talk to him.

And the conclusion:

EWTN and the newspaper it publishes has made John Burger, now jobless, suffer for committing the sin of journalism. At the Register, the truth won’t set you free; it’ll cost you your job. See, this is part of the reason why so many talented men and women of faith stay away from church-affiliated news and entertainment media. People who run churches and church organizations often don’t understand what communications (journalism, filmmaking, etc.) is. They think it’s all supposed to be publicity, and so they guarantee mediocrity, and ultimately the discouragement of talented people — artists and journalists — who have good and useful talents to give to the whole church.

Of course, we live in a day and age in which many of voices (click here for the most important example) in the mainstream press are struggling to commit acts of balanced, accurate journalism, when it comes time to cover the religious, moral and cultural issues that so deeply divide our land. Sometimes it’s hard to show tolerance to people who, according to your journalistic doctrines, can be labeled “intolerant.”

Please help us watch for any follow-up stories on this sad situation.

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Filed Under: Announcements, Catholicism, First Person, Godbeat, Journalism
About TMatt

Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Scripps Howard News Service.

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    Wait, hold up. There seems to be a contradiction between:

    …what surprised me when I read it was that Burger himself didn’t seem to pick up at the time on how outrageous Groeschel’s claim was. Nor, it seems, did anybody else on the Register‘s editorial staff.

    and

    …he forgot that EWTN didn’t really want him to be a journalist, but rather a publicist in disguise.

    If he didn’t notice that there was something striking about Groeschel’s words, then it would seem he displayed poor journalistic instincs, no? I mean, obviously there was a story there.

    Based on Dreher’s words, I’d think that the ‘disgraceful’ bit would be that only Burger was fired.

  • Passing By

    I tend to agree with Ray Ingles about Burger’s failure to pursue the issue, noting that it could have gone either way, with further explanation or a retraction of the comment. And given that Fr. Benedict has apologized, EWTN has taken him off the air, and his community and the Archdiocese of New York have disowned the statement, firing the reporting is rather inexplicable.

  • Jerry

    This post illustrates there is no essential difference between the Fox/MSNBC bias when it comes to politics and the bias shown by EWTN in firing Burger for the “sin” of reporting a story. It’s yet another illustration of the “golden rule”: “he who has the gold makes the rules.”

    For some stories you just have to read what various media outlets at various points along the religious (and political) spectrum are reporting to try to ferret out the facts. Because all too often what’s reported plays to the bias of the ones owning the media outlet.

  • Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz

    I disagree with Rod on one thing. He cannot say “…what surprised me when I read it was that Burger himself didn’t seem to pick up at the time on how outrageous Groeschel’s claim was…” and then say, “EWTN and the newspaper it publishes has made John Burger, now jobless, suffer for committing the sin of journalism…” How can he have “committed the sin of journalism” if he didn’t pick up “on how outrageous Groeschel’s claim was”? Isn’t that what a journalist is supposed to do? And if Burger was national editor of a paper that was mostly doing PR and not journalism, then how is it that he could do journalism?

  • Rod Dreher

    John Burger asked Benedict Groeschel questions and reported what he said, verbatim. That is journalism. While I think it would have been better journalism had he pressed Groeschel on these controversial statements, believe me, he was not fired for being insufficiently hard on Groeschel, probably the biggest star on the Catholic cable network that pays Burger’s salary. Burger is a scapegoat.

  • Elijah

    I am in some agreement that Burger is being excessively scapegoated, but isn’t there some merit to questioning his instincts to publish such an interview? Maybe second-guess himself or the father? Recording a conversation verbatim isn’t journalism – I can hire a court reporter or stenographer to do that.

  • http://ingles.homeunix.net/ Ray Ingles

    John Burger asked Benedict Groeschel questions and reported what he said, verbatim. That is journalism.

    Isn’t that stenography?

    Aren’t journalists supposed to present stories, add context, provide background, press for clarification, etc? Just taking what someone says and printing it… well, press releases aren’t that hard to come by. This site has taken reporters to task before for doing what you call ‘journalism’. Regularly.

  • http://www.thecatholicbeat.com Gail Finke

    It’s an interesting question and one that hits uncomfortably close to home for me as a journalist. I read the story the day it came out and what struck me was that the comments were published at all. They begged clarification — and as someone who knows a bit about mental illness, I know that it is indeed true that young people as well as adults with certain mental illnesses do sometimes behave in sexually inappropriate ways. It’s a simple fact and one that not many people are comfortable with. On the other hand, the remarks as they were reported sounded like rambling rather than a serious discussion of a very complicated issue, one that could easily be taken as exonerating people for criminal acts. I don’t know what I would have done in such a situation — pressed for more answers on the psychological issues, dropped the whole thing if I thought it was confusing and I could not get any further clarification, or attempted to see if Fr. Groeschel was exhibiting some sort of dementia. But I hope I would not have published them in that ambiguous way.

    But whatever one thinks of his putting them in the story, it is not the reporter’s fault they were published. It was the editor’s fault. Firing Burger seems to me to be a CYA move, just like the FFR’s apology and EWTN’s removing Fr. Groeschel from television. It doesn’t really matter whether what he said is true or false, whether his remarks were misinterpreted, whether they were a sign of senility — just shut him up, and the horse he rode in on. That seems to me to be the real reason for this response.

  • Jettboy

    All Journalism is PR work. That journalists don’t understand this and continue to think there is such a thing as Objectivity shows their lack of intelligence. Words have meaning both given and perceived, and no amount of claims for neutrality are going to smooth over that fact.

  • Jonathan Carpenter

    Dreher’s arguement is is based on the false premise that the Messenger wants to hear from you and does not have his mind made up. This is not the always the case in with the MSM. Take for instance the case of the trial of that pervert Father Murphy the New York Times covered. Do you remember how they implied that the case was influenced by the Vatican when it was not? The Judicial Vicar who tried the case against him tried to talk to the NYT. They did not want to listen to him and his evidence that contradicted their narrative. I know I am not a member of the Media Elite as Mr. Dreher but tell me how this helps anyone? How does it help anyone when the only stories of abuse they cover are abuses by Catholic Priests or Bishops. Case in point, many people have now heard that incidents with Jerry Sandusky were known back in 2000. Why no coverage? It is simpler to make it appear to be solely a “Catholic” problem while omitting the abuse all around us.

  • Rod Dreher

    Isn’t that stenography? Aren’t journalists supposed to present stories, add context, provide background, press for clarification, etc? Just taking what someone says and printing it… well, press releases aren’t that hard to come by.

    Do you think the page-long Q&A interviews the NYT Magazine presents on Sunday are not journalism? Of course you don’t think this. Burger didn’t do the interview like I would have done the interview, or probably how you would have done the interview, but you can’t claim that the Q&A format is not journalism. Come on. I’ve done interviews that I’ve turned into conventional pieces, with other information brought in, and I’ve done some that were published as straight Q&A transcripts.

    Besides, from my reading of the NCRegister masthead, there were four people in addition to Burger who saw that copy, or who had responsibility for seeing that copy, before it was published. Why was Burger the one fired?

  • FWKen

    Mr. Carpenter,

    Your points are true enough, but not applicable in this case. The Register is not the New York Times. Second, Fr. Benedict said what he said, and it’s not wrong to report it. In fact, the comments are consistent with others he has made over the years, so there would be no reason to suppress them. Like I said above, good journalism would have explored the comments a bit. While Fr. Benedict expressed what was, at one time, majority opinion among psychologists, obviously, it’s not current thinking, and so bore further examination. That’s the journalistic issue here, add I see it.

  • Jonathan Carpenter

    He should not have been fired. However, he missed several point that William Donohue of the Catholic League made that would have put this in proper context. These are “A quarter century ago, Father Groeschel and seven other priests broke away from a religious community to found the Franciscan Friars of Renewal. His service to the Church over the past half-century has been nothing less than heroic. His ministry to the least among us is especially noteworthy.

    Father Groeschel holds a Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University, and has put his training to work by counseling some of the most mentally and socially challenged people in our society. In addition, for the past four decades he has been screening men for the priesthood, weeding out those who should not be ordained. His record is impressive.

    In a recent interview, he hypothesized how a young person (14, 16 or 18, as he put it) could conceivably take advantage of a priest who was having a nervous breakdown. He also referred to Jerry Sandusky, the disgraced Penn State football coach, as “this poor guy.” For these remarks, and related comments, he is now being labeled as a defender of child abuse.

    The accusation is scurrilous. In the same interview, Groeschel emphatically said that priests who are sexual abusers “have to leave.” His reference to Sandusky was exactly the way a priest-psychologist might be expected to speak: “poor guy” conveys sympathy for his maladies—it is not a defense of his behavior! Indeed, Groeschel asked, “Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

    Groeschel is nearly 80 years old. A few years back, he was almost killed in an auto accident that left him disabled; it has definitely taken a toll on him. I have known him for two decades, and recently spent an afternoon with him. I’ve read his books, listened to his tapes—on sexual abuse—and have come to know a great priest. To condemn him for one part of one interview is wholly unjust. What do you think?

  • tmatt

    I have spiked at least two-thirds of the comments made on this thread because they had ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with journalism, but focused on issues of Catholic polity, doctrine, etc. Many have been nasty attacks on the church itself.
    Journalism, folks. Journalism.

  • Jess wonderin’

    While there may be arguments made that John Berger could/should have gone further in the interview, does that mean that it’s a fire-able offense? What, exactly, was he fired for? Didn’t he work for them for at least ten years? (I bet anything it was crap pay, too.)

    I mean, if he’s been doing this kind of interviewing/writing for ten years and apparently been doing a good enough job that they never fired him before, why now? (We know the answer to that and it ain’t Catholicism.)

  • http://faithvictoria.wordpress.com Steve Weatherbe

    I’ve been filing stories to Catholic periodicals for a while and they are only ones that reject stories because they don’t like what people say in their interviews. A prolife magazine killed a story because the prolife advocate who was the subject of the story was leading a national fight (In S.Korea) for an anti-abortion law but one with the usual rape and incest exceptions.
    A Catholic newspaper rejected my story on a legal action advancing the notion that churches should be free to take political positions (free, that is, of tax penalties from the IRS) because the publisher thought disagreed.
    Nothing like this ever happened with stories I filed to John Burger at the Register. He was an excellent editor and, just as Dreher said, he got fired for reporting what was said, which is his job.
    Don’t forget, the Catholic church only endorsed freedom of religion at Vatican II and I understand there was quite a fight getting it done. Has it ever actually endorses freedom of the press? Can’t find it in the Catechism.