Happy Holidays: AP on Journalistic Jihad in December Doing Dumb Storyline Retreads Against Evil Catholic Church

Catholic bashing from the AP? I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell you! But there's no Culture War, eh?

From The Media Report

In the month of December, the Associated Press published no less than five biased articles attacking the Catholic Church over abuse accusations against priests decades ago. Yet if one actually takes the time to labor through the articles, one sees that the AP only offers its readers only two basic takeaways: 1) Contingency lawyers love the free money that the Catholic Church is doling out, and 2) accused priests are guilty no matter how long ago the accusations are and how nonexistent the evidence may be.

Nothing has changed in the AP's slanted reporting against the Catholic Church since it started reporting on the issue back in the 1980s. What is not even on the AP's radar in any meaningful sense is the question of whether most of these decades-old claims against Catholic priests are even true or not.

Missing the big picture

For example, one the AP's pieces was a lengthy article about Pennsylvania dioceses doling out some $84 million in free money to 564 accusers, yet AP writer Michael Rubinkam did not even blink an eye or bother to question the veracity of a 45 year-old bloke who incredibly claims that a priest somehow abused him "two to four times a week for five years" and who also claims abuse by a second priest who was laicized 55 years ago. Do the math, everyone.

Needless to say, Rubinkam also did not reach out to the accused men to see what they had to say in defense of themselves. Both are long deceased. How convenient.

(And another note to Rubinkam: The 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report did not "conclude" that "more than 300 predator priests had molested more than 1,000 children." We have shown that claim to be completely false.)

This is journalism?

Another meandering AP article – one by Bernard Condon and Jim Mustian – purports to be about a "wave of lawsuits" against the Catholic Church because states are lifting the statutes of limitations. The piece begins with the scene of a Church-suing contingency lawyer looking out of his office window at a cathedral and wondering out loud, "I wonder how much that's worth?"

Yet by the end of the article, readers learn little else and are offered a single takeaway: Suing the Catholic Church is a lucrative practice for tort lawyers. That's it. Powerful stuff, eh?

Never missing a chance to attack the Catholic Church

Instead of educating readers on important issues when it comes to accusations against priests decades ago – such as the near-impossibility of defending oneself and the lack of any evidence or corroboration – the AP simply uses the topic as a cudgel with which to browbeat the Catholic Church. In yet another hit piece by the AP's nasty Nicole Winfield – a "Vatican correspondent" whose hatred of the Catholic Church is palpable with every word she types – Winfield somehow sees an injustice that the Catholic Church has not recently telephoned an accuser whose alleged abuser was shipped off to prison over a quarter century ago (shortly after the accuser complained of his abuse) and then died in prison 15 years ago.

What does Winfield expect of Church officials? A phone call to the accuser asking, "How much more money do you want?" Unreal.

Wringing their hands over 'lists'

If it were not already clear already, the Associated Press really, really hates the Catholic Church.

A breathless article by the AP's Claudia Lauer and Meghan Hoyer – both of whom we already cited for a dumb article back in October – frets that the lists of accused priests published on many diocesean web sites are not "complete." Imagine that.

Yet in all the time the pair wasted poring over lists of accused priests, one obvious question never occurred to them: Why is the Catholic Church the only organization on the planet that is expected to compile such lists of its accused ex-employees (including those long deceased)?

Where are the lists of accused former teachers from Chicago Public Schools? Or California public schools? The Boy Scouts? Hollywood? The question is not even on the AP's radar.

It's a free country, and the AP is allowed to hate whomever it wants, especially the Catholic Church. We get it.

But the real story here is the groupthink that has created an overarching mindset that the Catholic Church is somehow failing in its goal to to provide restitution for victims and rectify for its sins from decades ago.

In truth, the Catholic Church has gone far above and beyond what any other organization should be expected to, especially since there has never been any evidence that the Church ever had a bigger problem than anyone else. Yet the media and the AP will never tell you this.

This is a bigotry that everyone can see.

The AP needs to find some new storylines, and we just gave them a bunch of possibilities.

We hope to see better reporting by the media in 2020, but we won't hold our breath.