I suppose I’m taking my life in my hands, jousting with Jesuits. But come on, editors of America Magazine, I read your entire interview with Pope Francis, and I came away frustrated.
Did you Catholic journalists never hear of a follow-up question? Yes, it’s tough interviewing the big boss, but surely some of his answers simply begged for more elucidation.
Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Catholic Conference, gushed in a recent Washington Post blog that the interview was “a journalistic gold mine.” It may stand as “America Magazine’s greatest moment in its 104 years of publishing, a tribute to the Jesuits and the Catholic press and journalism overall.”
Sister Mary Ann may have a vested interest in rooting for her team. But the mainstream media was equally uncritical. Reporters from major print and broadcast media outlets savored tidbits from the interview as if they were truly revelatory.
Oh, isn’t that cool, the Pope loves Mozart and Fellini! And he thinks the hierarchy can be overly prescriptive!
The Pope’s quotes were good, but if you read the entire interview, you realized that America got “Reagan-ed.” You know, you let a powerful person’s wonderful sound bites prevent you from finding out what he actually has in mind and how he will govern.
Out of the News 