{"id":125799,"date":"2014-07-16T12:07:08","date_gmt":"2014-07-16T16:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/?p=125799"},"modified":"2014-08-29T13:31:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-29T17:31:03","slug":"concerning-the-latest-pope-francis-alleged-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/getreligion\/2014\/07\/concerning-the-latest-pope-francis-alleged-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Concerning the latest (alleged) interview with Pope Francis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So how would you like to be a press officer for the Vatican these days? Honestly, they should be getting combat pay.<\/p>\n

Here is the question that I have been asking, during the latest round of the game called, \u201cWhat did the pope say and who says that he said it?\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of basic journalism craft and ethics, what is an \u201cinterview\u201d? Here is the top of a Reuters report<\/a> that shows why I am asking this:<\/p>\n

ROME, July 13 (Reuters) \u2014<\/strong> About 2 percent of Roman Catholic clerics are sexual abusers, an Italian newspaper on Sunday quoted Pope Francis as saying, adding that the pontiff considered the crime \u201ca leprosy in our house\u201d.<\/p>\n

But the Vatican issued a statement saying some parts of a long article in the left-leaning La Repubblica<\/em> were not accurate, including one that quoted the pope as saying that there were cardinals among the abusers.<\/p>\n

The article was a reconstruction of an hour-long conversation between the pope and the newspaper\u2019s founder, Eugenio Scalfari, an atheist who has written about several past encounters with the pope.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what precisely is a \u201creconstruction of an hour-long conversation\u201d? Here is some additional information:<\/p>\n

The Vatican issued a statement noting Scalfari\u2019s tradition of having long conversations with public figures without taking notes or taping them, and then reconstructing them from memory. Scalfari, 90, is one of Italy\u2019s best known journalists.<\/p>\n

While acknowledging that the conversation had taken place, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi issued a statement saying that not all the phrases could be attributed \u201cwith certainty\u201d to the pope. Lombardi said that, in particular, a quote attributed to the pope saying cardinals were among the sex abusers was not accurate and accused the paper of trying to \u201cmanipulate naive readers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So this was a private conversation and the journalist did not \u2014 perhaps as an homage to Truman Capote<\/a> \u2014 take notes or use an audio recorder. Instead, he left the hour-long conversation and then, with his razor-sharp (we can only hope) 90-year-old memory, he \u201creconstructed\u201d the verbatim quotations from this event.<\/p>\n

Reuters went out of its way to say, over and over, that Pope Francis \u201cwas quoted as saying\u201d these words, thus distancing itself from the precise content. Is that enough?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So is the story what the pope allegedly said or the fact that this famous scribe Scalfari claims that the pope said XY and Z? I honestly do not know.<\/p>\n

I am just as intrigued that the Vatican could confirm that parts of the interview were accurate and that other parts were not. Is the assumption here (a) that someone from the press office was in the room, (b) that someone was listening in or (c) that the Vatican tapes all papal \u201cinterviews\u201d just in case \u2014 for the files, so to speak. I\u2019d love to know the details. How about you?<\/p>\n

You can see all of these issues surface, once again, in the first few lines of the BBC report on the same story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Pope Francis has been quoted as saying that reliable data indicates that \u201cabout 2%\u201d of clergy in the Catholic Church are paedophiles.<\/p>\n

The Pope said that abuse of children was like \u201cleprosy\u201d infecting the Church, according to the Italian La Repubblica<\/em> newspaper. He vowed to \u201cconfront it with the severity it demands\u201d.<\/p>\n

But a Vatican spokesman said the quotes in the newspaper did not correspond to Pope Francis\u2019s exact words.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In an analysis of this dilemma, David Willey of the BBC Rome bureau asked the obvious questions:<\/p>\n

When is a papal interview not an interview? Sunday\u2019s edition of La Repubblica<\/em> devotes its first three pages to an account of a conversation between Pope Francis and editor Eugenio Scalfari, which took place last Thursday. Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a sharp note that it was not an interview in the normal sense of the word, although he admitted it conveyed the \u201csense and the spirit\u201d of the conversation.<\/p>\n

Mr Scalfari does not use a digital recorder, and Father Lombardi said Pope Francis never checked the accuracy of the interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was not an interview \u201cin the normal sense of the word.\u201d Ah. I feel so much better now.<\/p>\n

So one final question: When other journalists quote these remarks, as many are doing, how many sentences of content do they need to include in order to set the scene, to provide the right journalistic \u2014 or anti-journalistic \u2014 context for these words that the pope did or didn\u2019t say?<\/p>\n

BONUS LINK:<\/strong> Catholic conservative Phil Lawler asks the obvious, and appropriate, question<\/a>: Would an American journalist be fired for producing this kind of \u201cinterview\u201d material? Ah, but this article was produced by someone \u2014 as founder of the paper in question \u2014 on the management side of the room?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So how would you like to be a press officer for the Vatican these days? Honestly, they should be getting combat pay. Here is the question that I have been asking, during the latest round of the game called, \u201cWhat did the pope say and who says that he said it?\u201d In terms of basic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,6,66,7,18,49],"tags":[3534,3535,1814,1167],"class_list":["post-125799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholicism","category-godbeat","category-interviews","category-journalism","category-people","category-sex","tag-eugenio-scalfari","tag-interviews-2","tag-la-repubblica","tag-pope-francis"],"yoast_head":"\nConcerning the latest (alleged) interview with Pope Francis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So how would you like to be a press officer for the Vatican these days? Honestly, they should be getting combat pay. 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