Trial balloon
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 03, 2005
Time magazine announces that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is now a leading candidate to succeed Pope John Paul II.
What a wonderful idea!
But there's a problem with the Time story: It's based on not one single discernible fact. The Time story is based on perceptions offered by a few "Vatican sources." But Time's quirky selection of two other alleged "front runners" does not inspire much confidence in the quality of the magazine's sources.
In a word, this looks very much like a case in which someone has floated a story, to see how other people will react.
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