Eric Convey, the senior executive city editor for the Boston Herald, saw my earlier blog post about what I see as slanted and unfair coverage of the Boston Catholic Men’s Conference on Saturday and offered an explanation:
I saw your blog postings and wanted to tell you what happened Saturday. The explanation is not very sinister.
I’d been planning to attend and slip into reporter mode, but had the chance to grab a week with my family—a rarity, unfortunately. So I did so. (I suspect the speakers would have applauded this!)
I left instructions with the city desk to cover it if possible. So when things slowed, Marie Szaniszlo was dispatched. She’s a very decent person and a good reporter.
(The city editor on duty told me he actually had thought it would be a short story about what he expected would be a rather bland event but one which we should cover out of overall fairness.)
As I understand it, she covered the speaker who was on when, or shortly after, she arrived. I wish it had been any of the big names, if you will. Bad luck, but no evil plan.
By the way, MaryJane, thanks for the compliment about my coverage. I do try to be balanced. I’m glad it shows.
My reply follows after the jump…
Technorati Tags: Boston, Catholic, conference, media-bias
Eric’s response is good for what it is; but doesn’t address my major concerns. Marie’s coverage does not convey an accurate picture of the event, even of the one presentation she did attend. She takes a minor point out of context and clearly misrepresents the speaker’s attitude and message. She also misrepresents the beliefs and values of the Catholics who attended the event, what emerges from her coverage is the typical warped anti-Catholic caricature of Church teaching and orthodox belief.
Instead of trying to understand Sean Forest’s presentation of the Church’s teaching on contraception and his critique of mainstream education that leads him to advocate homeschooling she evokes the knee-jerk reaction of people who don’t understand and don’t want to understand. She only hears what she wants to hear rather than trying to understand where he and others are coming from.
I would prefer silence about the event to coverage which reinforces negative stereotypes and perpetuates misunderstandings of what the Church believes and why she teaches what she does.
Isn’t she the same reporter who published a press release from VOTF as her own article? For a ‘conservative’ newspaper, they seem to have issues with the Catholic Church.
These lame explanations from the editor only decreases my willingness to pay $0.50 for that rag. I recently tried a subscription to my local paper (Fitchburg Sentinel-Enterprise) and it was unreadable. Why would I pay money to support the livlihood of counter-culture liberals?
The only good way to get news now is to go to blogs…read the article for basic info and then pay attention to the commenters who rip the story to shreads. (This blog is good for that and freerepublic.com is good on the national scene.)
Mealnie wrote, “Instead of trying to understand Sean Forest’s presentation of the Church’s teaching on contraception and his critique of mainstream education that leads him to advocate homeschooling she evokes the knee-jerk reaction of people who don’t understand and don’t want to understand.”
Indeed, to put it more bluntly the writer for the Herald did was distort and advocate. She what she did not do was report.