Pope wants journalism like the Catholic church wants child sex abuse probes: Slow, aimless... Take it easy with those hard-hitting exclusives and investigations, said the Pope this week, lumping inconvenient quality journalism with fake news and clickbait. We can't think why the head of a church mired in decades of globe-spanning child abuse scandals would have a problem with hacks doing their job and getting straight …
"You know...the Bible is, well, a bit "fake news" really, isn't it?"
Indeed this bit seems to confirm that that's The Pope's view too:
God's mortal deputy went on to reference Genesis 4:4-16 and 11:1-9, the stories of Cain and Abel and Tower of Babel, as examples for the harm caused by playing it fast and loose with reality.
The pontiff declared scribes should set aside the chase for breaking news in favor of making sure they get things right and tell the actual story.
There is a reason "The Economist" is so highly regarded as a reliable source, even amongst some who don't share its laissez-faire economic/political editorial line, and it is at least partly due to the fact that it almost never "breaks" a story. You read The Economist because you want thorough fact-checking and analysis, not because you're desperate to beat Twitter in the wild speculation and scandalous spin stakes.
I haven't bought a daily paper for over a decade and the only thing likely to tempt me back would be a publication that openly stated it usually aimed to cover stories 72 hours to a week after the likes of the Daily Blackshirt because accuracy means everything and "scoops" mean nothing.
...You read The Economist because you want thorough fact-checking and analysis,...
Ah. So Brexit plunged the UK straight into recession in 2017, and Climate Change is settled science and mustn't be questioned?
I think you'll find that The Economist has its own prejudices and follows the crowd like the vast mass of the mainstream media..
"and Climate Change is settled science"
That the world is rapidly warming largely due to human activities - primarily the emission of CO2 - hasn't been in any credible scientific doubt whatsoever for at least a decade now If that counts as settled?
"Ah. So Brexit plunged the UK straight into recession in 2017, and Climate Change is settled science and mustn't be questioned?"
Climate change is settled science. What it isn't settled in is in the minds of non-scientists.
This is a technology site, right? We don't see people down the pub have their own opinions about processor architecture, they just assume that the experts are right about that stuff.
"Steve, I've been thinking. I don't see how Intel and AMD are going to get past the uncertainty principle, they cannot just keep shrinking the gap between transistors. Eventually the error rate is going to be too high."
"Yeah, Phil, I know. I reckon they should just build 3D chips. That allows closer spacing of transistors without their linear distance going down."
"Come on, Steve. How are you going to dissipate heat from the centre of the chip?"
"Good point, Phil, I never thought about that. I guess that's why I'm not a hardware designer, and just work in an office dealing with stationary orders."
That's the same as climate science. You have literally no right to an opinion on climate science, in the following sense: climate science is decided in journals, not in the Daily Mail. Your thoughts will not get published, I am going to guess, so you don't get an opinion.
Where you do get an opinion is in electing your government, and some of them seem as intransigent as you.
It's a bit too much to listen to him go on about the evils that "fake news" causes.
Perhaps he is forgetting the Millions over the past near 1500 years that the organization he heads caused to be killed, tortured, abused based on their interpretation of concepts that cannot be proven or disproven.
It's not like the Russian trolls are literally burning people at the stake or literally torturing them.
Pretty sure Russian internet trolls have not yet been proven to be part of a vast cover up for child abuse.
One could also add that various things his organization pushes still cause ongoing harm and distress to many, in excess of what "fake news" could ever be.
When you have actual skeletons in the closet..... Huge amounts of them.....
"It's not like the Russian trolls are literally burning people at the stake or literally torturing them."
You forget that Putin is in an alliance with the conservative elements of the Russian Orthodox Church. Gay people are persecuted and physically abused with the tacit encouragement of that alliance.
"Their continued opposition to contraception".
The Pope is actually not against condoms but there is opposition because he is considered too "modern", even in Britain, to my surprise. This is not exactly my field and I find it funny that the only person a Catholic priest is not allowed to fuck is his wife. He is taking baby steps but the road ahead is long.
Umm... the Salem witch trials were an all-Protestant affair, thankyousomuch.
The Crusades were a European war - specifically a land grab - in the Middle East. We've managed to keep making those to this day, without the blessing of any recent popes that I'm aware of. Religion was used as political cover, but it wasn't the underlying motivation, any more than "spreading democracy" was the motivation for invading Iraq.
The Spanish Inquisition was a secret police force used to enforce national conformity in Spain after the Reconquista, when there was a moral panic about Jews outwardly converting to Catholicism, but secretly continuing to be Jewish. This mattered because Jews would tend to favour the ousted Muslim rulers (who had allowed them a lot of freedom) over the conquering Christian kings (who allowed them virtually none). In other words: it was about political loyalty.
"Initially, they were about stopping the Turks taking Anatolia and threatening Byzantium."
It was the Fourth Crusade in 1204 that sacked Christian Byzantium.
The People's Crusade in 1096 was responsible for mass murders of Jews in the Rhineland.
The Albigensian Crusade of 1209–1229 slaughtered the Christian Cathar "heretics" of the Languedoc region of France.
"[...] Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln [...]"
The full story is an interesting example of manipulation of religious fervour and material greed. Human nature is unfortunately so predictable.
Land grab...? after the collapse of the Roman Empire c 600 more or less), Western Europe was pretty depopulated, as shown by birth/Baptismal records. Some 500-odd years later population rebounded caused by several factors. By the time Charlemagne came up, there was sufficient population pressure to allow expansion of population into new or previously abandoned areas. In the near eastern areas the Avars and (Southern) Saxons were slaughtered; meanwhile the Cathusians (bear with me, I'm doing this from memory) expanded into the German forests and the Estonians, etc expanded into the northern Baltic areas. While Islam and Europe coexisted in Spain for the time being, the reconquest and expansion of Spain continued until 1492 One can guess at the fate of the disorganized pagan tribes of the conquered areas. In summary both Islam and Europe expanded and added land/population until they collided.
" In other words: it was about political loyalty."
Which is the main aim for any organised religion. It is social control of a society by a ruling elite. The religious dogma proscriptions are enforced by indoctrination, coercion, and usually transcribed into civil law of a state.
I couldn't care less if it was a priest, a politician or a tv presenter, anyone who messes with kids is going to get my hate.
Don't think religion has the exclusive rights to hate for messing with kids but when the head of the catholic church who some members have been proven on many many occasions to be pedos starts spouting bullshit about getting facts straight then there is going to be a lot of hate directed at them and what they stand for.
"Anti-religion: the only socially approved hate?"
You don't want to be hated? Don't be religious then. You do actually have a choice, unlike myself, who does not get a choice as to whether bishops get to sit in the House of Lords. Their qualification to decide on my laws? Believing in something stupid that the small minority of people think is true.
Here is the obvious proof that all major religions are bullshit. The world's major religions are pretty well known now. If any of them had any substance, why are they geographically concentrated and not spread out? If Hinduism (say) is the One True Faith, then non-Hindus should be seeing this and converting. All the Hindus shouldn't be in one place, miraculously just because their parents were Hindu.
In history, some trades were handed down through parental lineage. But nobody said that being a cooper was the One True Profession, and those thatchers and wheelwrights were jobless heathens. Religion is an inherited trait, part of an organism's extended phenotype, to use Dawkins's terminology.
So, where are the quotes from the pope that support the hysterical, clickbait headline of this article? Where does he draw a connection, or even a parallel, between hard-hitting investigative journalism and "fake news"?
Or were you just desperate for a headline that would get people to click?
What he does say:
Nor can we ever stop seeking the truth, because falsehood can always creep in, even when we state things that are true. An impeccable argument can indeed rest on undeniable facts, but if it is used to hurt another and to discredit that person in the eyes of others, however correct it may appear, it is not truthful.
Example: "As POTUS, Donald Trump directs the employment of thousands of people whose job is to promote his agenda; his political allies employ many more, across multiple organisations. Trump has previously called the Pope's comments "disgraceful". Now here is Shaun Nichols, ostensibly employed by The Register, posting smears on the Pope's character and thoughts."
Every statement in the foregoing paragraph is well documented truth. Does that make the paragraph, taken as a whole, "true"? Are you, in fact, working for Trump?
"An impeccable argument can indeed rest on undeniable facts, but if it is used to hurt another and to discredit that person in the eyes of others, however correct it may appear, it is not truthful."
In order words - don't rock the boat - turn a blind eye. While possibly taken out of context - that wording suggests a line of thinking that accounts for many of the Catholic Church's actions in covering up scandals.
The biblical commandment is "Thou shalt not bear false witness". Otherwise you generally are expected to "tell the truth, and nothing but the whole truth" by swearing on the Bible.
Do you have a problem with an article mocking the head of the catholic church asking for journalists to slow down and get their facts straight when there isn't any instance of kiddy fiddling priests where the facts were wrong?
Gone are the days of religion when they could get away with murder.
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