By arthur Weinreb
Friday, april 8, 2005Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Julius Caesar, act II, Scene ii
Pope John Paul II was a valiant man and certainly no coward; but that did not prevent some of the mainstream media from announcing his death prior to the time that he did pass away last Saturday. associated Press was forced to issue a one line release announcing that the Vatican was denying that the Pope was in fact dead.
The fiasco began when an Italian news agency reported the death of the pontiff a couple of hours before his actual death. Fox News and CNN, amongst others reported the death of Pope John Paul although these announcements carried warnings that his death had not been confirmed. But we are used to hearing unconfirmed reports that inevitably turn out to be later confirmed as true and a lot of people reacted as if the much loved Pope had in fact died. The Houston Chronicle quoted Rev. Leon Strieder, a professor of liturgy and sacraments at the University of St. Thomas as likening the situation to people in a hospital waiting room being told that a loved one has passed away, only to be told a few minutes later that it was a mistake. Strieder described the media’s actions as "unconscionable".
The premature announcement of the Pope’s death was not the first major faux pas that has been made by the mainstream media. During the U.S. election in November 2000, some of these same sources declared that the winner of the State of Florida (and the presidency) was Bush, then Gore, then Bush. There is really no excuse for these types of major blunders.
Mainstream newspapers, radio and television are now not only in competition with each other but with the Internet. Internet news sites and blog sites are gaining more and more respectability as time goes by. as this is taking place, more and more people are looking to the Internet for their news rather than traditional sources. as has been argued in this column, the "outing" of Dan Rather over the false documents relating to George W. Bush’s National Guard service gained a new respectability for those who, according to critics, sit at home in their pajamas posting information on web sites. It appears that the mainstream media is in more of a rush to report news, lest they be beaten to the punch by Internet news sites and bloggers.
True or not, that did not justify reporting the death of the Pope in that absence of an official statement from the Vatican. Rev. Strieder was right — it can only be described as unconscionable.