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Hey L.A. Times! You owe a correction and apology!
I picked this up from the young Papist with my emphases and comments:
Memo to the Los Angeles Times: fire Kim Geiger, and fire her editor while you are at it.
The Catholic News Agency has identified this article published five days ago by the Los Angeles Times which falsely attributes two quotes authored by the fake "catholic" group Catholics United to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
As of this writing, the error is still uncorrected on their website. Did the entire staff decide to take a vacation? [I also checked the Corrections page of the same LATimes... nothing so far.]
This mistake is either laziness or manipulation on the part of the author, and to such a serious degree as to warrant a correction and an apology, and soon.
The error is also disturbing because it plays into the propensity of some news outlets to create/allow confusion over what is the true position of the US bishops on this sensitive and critical issue of health care reform. [D’ya think?]
On the day of the health care debate last weekend I pointed out that the website Politico, which is very popular among DC political operatives and hill staffers, had misleading blog posts and a misleading cover story/headline for the majority of the day, claiming that the US bishops had "signed off" on PelosiCare. [The bishops have NOT "signed off" of anything! How can they sign off on a bill that doesn’t exist? The US bishops tried to get people to express themselves to members of Congress about tax-payer funding of abortion and conscience clauses.]
The danger here was that hill staffers would relay the misleading information they read on Politico to their bosses who would then go to vote on the floor thinking that the US bishops had signed off on health care reform in the format it was being voted on at that time, when in actual fact the bishops still opposed it.
In any case, an error of this magnitude should simply be corrected, and immediately.
The LATimes author can be contacted at kgeiger@latimes.com. {update – her email address has apparently been disabled or her inbox is full.} [Indeed.]
Oh, and for the record, Chris Korzen and all his buddies at Catholics United, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, and Catholics for Choice are a bunch of self-serving, duplicitous parasites [duplicitous parasites!] and I’ll be happy to debate their campaign of distortions and misinformation any time someone wants to sponsor it. I say this with all charity because it’s the truth. They are paid to confuse and deceive Catholics and they should be ashamed for it.
Members of these groups have worked and may still work in a diocesan office with which I am familiar. How these so-called Catholic groups get such a following among the rank and file of Catholics who work in the Church, including school-education offices, communication offices, social doctrine offices, immigration offices, and even adult education offices is beyond me.
Comment by Supertradmom — 13 November 2009 @ 1:08 pmI note in the linked article that our friend, George Soros, has generously funded these fake Catholic organizations. Soros and his money are ubiquitous and very dangerous for our country.
Comment by Melania — 13 November 2009 @ 1:15 pmGet Religion has been calling for a correction as well these past few days.
Comment by Peggy R — 13 November 2009 @ 2:01 pm[Removed as being irrelevant to the topic of the entry.]
Comment by romancrusader — 13 November 2009 @ 2:17 pmAll told the Stupak amendment is not pro-life, it is what it is.
Comment by romancrusader — 13 November 2009 @ 2:20 pmCatholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Voice of the Faithful are still active in the Boston area even as they fade elsewhere. The Concord Pastor website promotes these groups (one example). So do other pastors.
Comment by Massachusetts Catholic — 13 November 2009 @ 2:50 pmThe L A Times will likely not print a retraction. They believe the Church is the Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles and Mahoney is not likely to take the Times on over this issue since philosophically Mahoney and the liberal Times seem to agree on most things.
Comment by EXCHIEF — 13 November 2009 @ 3:39 pmThey won’t apologize until they feel like they did something wrong.
But look at this:
Mahony and the [liberals] agree.
USCCB is against abortion and conscience clauses in the House bill.
Is nobody concerned that if this bill were perfect on these two areas, there are still about 1988 pages of stuff that the Church should be declaiming as morally objectionable? From rooftops with bullhorns? For over two centuries, the Church spoke with a very clear voice about the evils of socialist philosophy—replaces God with the State; stokes man’s pride and vanity to think he can solve problems essential to the human condition, thereby denying original sin; promotes material misery; violates justice/natural law by destruction of property rights; and essentially enslaves subjects (for they are no longer citizens), denying their dignity as made in the image of God—and now, the hierarchy and the USCCB have gone so soft, so left-wing on the subject, that it makes it all the easier for groups like this to manipulate opinion the way that they do.
The LAT will never retract—they are, willfully or not, serving the evil tide that various authors have called by various names (Prof. P. Correa de Olveira’s “Revolution” sticks in my head), and they are not sorry.
Comment by JMody — 13 November 2009 @ 4:07 pmWhy wouldn’t they post a correction? The damage has been done already and nobody reads the retractions (which are typically hidden below the legal notices in the classified section – I exaggerate, but only a little). Such retractions also don’t list what was erroneously said, just that the new wording would say.
Plus to them this is old news, since the bill voted on is dead and only a precursor to Senate and then committee mangling. If they wait another week, it can be even older and people won’t even remember the original article they are retracting….
On a slightly different take – the particular error on that mailbox for the reporter (I tried it) shows the tell-tale signs that it wasn’t deleted or is full, but that Email is being blocked by a filter at the LA Times (like is used for Spam). Perhaps she’s only taking Email from those she knows (a white list). Sort of like putting one’s fingers in one’s ears and shouting “LA LA LA LA…”.
Comment by tzard — 13 November 2009 @ 5:07 pmIt is astonishing how quickly and how far the major papers in this nation have fallen. I am hard put to think of a major paper besides
the WSJ that is not manipulating the news-by omission or by commission.
As for the folks at “catholics” United, “catholics” in Alliance for the Common Good, and “catholics” for Choice: I believe Mr. Peters
Comment by Clinton — 13 November 2009 @ 6:34 pmcaptures it perfectly with his phrasing. “Duplicitous parasites” indeed.
A correction has been added to the online article, and presumably has or will be published in the printed paper, since it cites the section in which the original article was printed:
Comment by Greg Smisek — 14 November 2009 @ 12:25 am