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Pope Benedict and the American Media Fr. Michael ReillyOnce again, the media have failed miserably in their attempt to bully the Catholic Church into accepting their agenda. In American politics, the media are able to frame the debate on key issues by negatively portraying elected officials who disagree with their agenda or by commissioning and touting push polls. Story Continues Below Throughout the Terri Schiavo controversy, the media informed the public that the entire American public objected to Republican efforts in Congress to protect her life. After she was dead, it was revealed that there were serious flaws in the polls and that in reality nearly 80 percent of the American public actually believe that it was wrong to starve her to death. Likewise, the media are able to damage the credibility of key people, and by extension their ideas, by labeling them. While the label "right wing" or "conservative" is regularly applied to some commentators, the media never apply the "liberal" label to other commentators. Barbra Streisand is simply Barbra Streisand, as compared to the "very conservative" Charlton Heston. Rush Limbaugh is the "conservative" radio host, but Al Franken is just a radio host. In a similar way, the media shamelessly attempted to bully the cardinals in their selection of the 265th pope. Frustrated by their inability to influence the 2004 presidential election at home, the media regularly floated polls indicating that American Catholics disagree with key Church teachings on human life and sexuality. They also described nearly each of the leading papabile as either "promising prospects" or "hard-line traditionalists." The press went out of its way to find prominent Catholics to say that the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger would be "divisive." They have called him everything from the papal enforcer to the enemy of academic freedom in Catholic universities. Much to their dismay, in one of the shortest conclaves in history, Cardinal Ratzinger was recognized by more than two-thirds of the world's cardinals as a man who could lead more than 1 billion Catholics throughout the world. How did the cardinals opt for a man who came to symbolize conservative Catholicism throughout the reign of John Paul II? Maybe it's because their view of Cardinal Ratzinger is based on personal experience and knowledge of the Church, rather than through the lens of the American media. Now the media are dismissing the cardinals as "out of touch" with their followers. Maybe the cardinals of the Catholic Church simply dismiss the American media as irrelevant.
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