TORONTO, July 29, 2002 (LSN.ca) – In a Saturday morning editorial on World Youth Day, the National Post’s editors showed a breadth of mind unusual in Canadian journalism—and reminiscent of the paper’s editorial heyday under Conrad Black and John O’Sullivan. Entitled “Mother and papa,” meaning the CBC (“Mothercorp”) and the Pope, the editorial blasts the CBC for pursuing the “marginal story of anti-Catholic political activism as though it were of roughly equal scale and importance,” leaving CBC viewers with the impression that WYD was “an affair saturated with controversy.” In sum, the Post said this was “not balanced reporting but its opposite.” In an unintended comic highlight this weekend, the CBC National devoted an entire news item to one activist “who was asked by police to stop distributing condoms to pilgrims.” As the Post observed, “The spiritual leader of more than a billion people … is ‘balanced’ by a pipsqueak handing out rubbers.” Anti-Christian bias at the CBC is not news, the Post noted. “What is more telling this week … is the public broadcaster’s inability to deal with the big issues…” Despite the CBC’s confidence in its own sophistication, its brain trust was incapable of grasping the phenomenon of thousands of pilgrims responding to a papal invitation to “deepen their relationship with God” at events that reveal “spiritual unity and fulfillment,” the Post says. “This does not compute,” the Post concludes, “in the mind of those middle aged bien pensants for whom the idea of moral certainty is alien and traditional institutional religion abhorrent. But,” the paper concludes, traditional Christian belief “will not go away merely because too many intelligent people cannot understand it.”
The Communist (oops!) er, Canadian Broadcasting Network contracted with WYD to be the host broadcaster for the six day event. Although many wonderful happenings and interviews were well covered by the network, the nightly, heavily viewed National News reports were sometimes beyond belief in their lack of balance and objectivity. As well, daily coverage anchor, Peter Mansbridge, was somewhat surly or at best unenthusiastic during most of his seemingly unwelcome assignment covering the week’s events. Interviews and special reports by Alison Smith were usually a credit to her journalistic professionalism.
Mansbridge’s assigned so-so (as usual) church commentators all week this time were somewhat liberal Jesuit historian Fr. Jacques Monet and definitely liberal and contentious Notre Dame Sister Susan Kidd. They were distinguishable by their joint disobedience to Pope John Paul’s repeated emphasis on church rule requiring them to wear clothing prominently identifying one as a priest and the other as a religious sister. As well, both provided commentary with the usual ‘progressive’ jargon that allowed them to avoid tipping their hand on disagreements with church teaching. This fudging jargon also often allowed them to avoid complete or positive commentary about certain situations which were a problem for them as they came up during World Youth Days.
To read the full text see of the post editorial see: https://nationalpost.com/search/site/story.asp?id=AB4B711D-F072-4B5C-9828-E490356AF97C