Now why does that sound familiar?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 13, 2012

When Andrew Brown wrote in the Guardian, chastising the Reuters news service for a slanted report on the Pope’s “State of the World” speech, L’Osservatore Romano was pleased. So pleased, in fact, that the Vatican newspaper reprinted Brown’s piece nearly intact.

It’s a good piece—Brown’s, that is—deserving of attention. Here’s the essential thrust:

On Monday, Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican at which he didn't say a single word about gay marriage… So why is it news? Because Reuters and, following them, many other people reported that he had denounced gay marriage as a threat to western civilisation.

That's quite an important point, actually. If you surf around the internet this today, you'll find dozens of commentators lashing out at the Pope because of what they thought he said, based on their reading of the Reuters report. Brown's corrective analysis, which appeared in the Guardian on January 11, was necessary. Still it might have sounded familiar to CWN readers. Here’s what our own January 9 news report said on the same topic:

Reuters, on the other hand, devoted most of its analysis to the question of same-sex marriage: a topic that the Pope did not mention.

I don’t mean to suggest that Andrew Brown cribbed the idea from CWN. He is perfectly capable of making the observation himself; indeed the slant of the Reuters article was hard to miss. This is just another reminder that if you want your news and analysis today, as opposed to tomorrow—or January 9, as opposed to January 11 in the Guardian or January 13 in L’Osservatore Romano--bookmark the CWN headline page.