Catholic World News is a popular and generally useful information source on Catholic matters. On its About CWN page, CWNews describes its mission as:
Catholic World News is an independent Catholic news service staffed by lay Catholic journalists, dedicated to providing accurate world news, written from a distinctively Catholic perspective.
There is no question that the reports from CWNews are written from a “distinctively Catholic perspective.” However, the claim that the service is “dedicated to providing accurate world news” can certainly be called into question. You see, CWNews has exhibited a rather disconcerting trend in recent months in terms of accuracy and journalistic integrity. At least five headline stories in the past four months have included either inaccurate details or downright false information.The last case of skewed facts occurred two days ago. CWNews eagerly broke the “story” that Pope Benedict XVI “uses the older ritual himself for his private Mass, that is, the Pope himself celebrates the Mass “using the 1962 Missal.” However, as I was perusing Catholic news sites this morning, I stumbled upon the following story from Catholic News Service:
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI concelebrates his daily morning Mass in Italian using the current edition of the Roman Missal, the Vatican spokesman said. Claims that the pope celebrates his private Mass using the Tridentine rite are incorrect, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi told Catholic News Service July 17. The Tridentine Mass is the Latin-language liturgy that predates the Second Vatican Council; it was last revised in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal. Less than 10 days after Pope Benedict July 7 issued his letter and norms providing greater opportunity for the celebration of the Tridentine Mass, news reports claimed Pope Benedict already had been celebrating the old rite privately. “The confusion probably was caused by our footage of the pope celebrating facing the altar, which is due to the fact that the altar is against the wall” in the private chapel of the Apostolic Palace, Father Lombardi said. With the altar against the wall, the concelebrants in the private chapel end up having their backs toward the congregation during the eucharistic prayer.
This CNS story, based on information given by the Vatican’s own spokesperson, directly contradicts the CWNews story. So I thought to myself, who’s got it right? I re-read the CWNews story in order to see if it indicated any sources. I found the following: “Informed sources at the Vatican have confirmed reports that the Holy Father regularly celebrates Mass using the 1962 Roman Missal.” Who are these mystery sources, and just how “informed” are they really? We’ll never know because CWNews does not tell us.
CWNews has a penchant for using anonymous “informed sources” in Rome for its information, yet for all we know these sources may be just tourists or amateur journalists. When CWNews ran three sequential stories on Fr. Jon Sobrino back in March, all of which contained false reports and fudged facts regarding an alleged discipline and censure, it referred to “informed Vatican sources.” But in the third story, CWNews claimed that the Vatican itself and the Jesuit order confirmed its earlier reports that Fr. Sobrino would in fact be disciplined and censured for his theological positions. As we later discovered when the official Vatican notification came out, CWNews was glaringly wrong in all three of its stories. Katerina and I blogged on the matter, where we noted that “CWNews seriously misled us on this one, not only with one speculative story, which would have been pardonable, but also with two follow-up stories that claimed that the disciplining of Sobrino was a fact and was confirmed by a number of high-ranking clerics.”
This is what happens when news services become gossip mongers, passing off stories that are based on whispers and rumors as solid news. Had CWNews not been so overzealous to break all these stories before there were any hard facts, a method resembling more closely the Entertainment Tonight than USA Today, it could have avoided the very embarrassing situation of public exposure of faulty journalism. Remember Dan Rather!
Another story that included inaccuracies was CWNews’ March 2007 report on the exchange between Sean Hannity, co-host of FoxNews’ Hannity and Colmes, and Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International. Notwithstanding its disappointing coverage, the article included one glaring misrepresentation of the facts. It read: “At the close of the televised segment Father Euteneuer said that as long as Hannity maintained his public stance in support of contraception, he should not receive the Eucharist.”
If you read over the transcripts or watch the video of the exchange, you will discover that Fr. Euteneuer said no such thing. What CWNews attempted to summarize were the concluding remarks of the exchange:
Hannity: Would you deny me communion?
Fr. Euteneuer: I would.
Hannity: Wow.
No claim of a universal, blanket judgment on Hannity’s worthines to receive the Eucharist occurs. On the contrary, Fr. Euteneuer, who was pressed by Hannity, indicated that he would deny Communion to Hannity. In a news story, accuracy counts. CWNews left much to be desired in this regard.
I think CWNews has a lot to offer, and I especially like its News Bytes section that relays hidelines from other news services. However, considering its recent trend of inaccurate reporting–in headline stories, no less–I recommend comparing CWNews stories to other Catholic news agencies’ reports in order to be sure that what you are reading is fair and accurate.
By chance, does anyone see an ideological current running under the inaccuracies and misinformation in these CWNews articles? The celebration of the so-called Tridentine Liturgy in the Pope’s private chapel…the displining of a liberation theologian…comment on a public personality’s unworthiness to receive communion…is it just me? With or without an ideological bent, the root of the inaccuries and misinformation at CWNews ought to concern whoever it is who oversees the service.
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