Can the mainstream media count?

Can the mainstream media count?

In the past four days, I have seen countless news stories from news media around the world, all reporting the same stupid error. Last Friday, I blogged that eight Boston priests have been laicized by the Vatican. Yet, news story after news story (this is just one example) says seven, or to mix it up, the monsignor plus six.

Here’s the Archdiocese of Boston’s press release announcing the laicizations. Count the names. That’s eight. If they can’t even get such basic facts right, how can we trust the rest of their reporting. Or to put it another way, watch how they all parrot the same mistake over and over.

It’s not rocket science. All you have to do is go to the archdiocese’s web site and read the press release. Instead, they just slavishly copy the same (wrong) wire service story. Sheesh.

Update: Well, that explains it. Apparently they can count. They just had more information than the archdiocese put in the press release. One of the eight men was a deacon. So, seven priests plus a deacon. Their stories are inaccurate in that they’re listing only seven of the eight laicized men, but that becomes just a technicality and an omission, not an error.  And it also makes my original post in error as well, which I will fix now.

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