The Archbishop And The Press

The blog I Don't Know, But (see sidebar) links to a calm, evenhanded, but very solid essay by the Archbishop of Denver.

Most readers who follow the columns of George Will or Paul Krugman do so because they share the author’s views or because they want to know what the other side is saying. And because Will and Krugman are both opinion journalists, we expect them to argue a certain set of ideas.

In like manner, anyone reading my own writings gets a pretty clear sense, pretty quickly, of how I think about issues. As a Catholic bishop, I belong to a believing community with a widely accessible and carefully articulated understanding of the world.

In contrast, we usually know very little about the person who writes an unsigned editorial or the people who create the nightly news. And that’s worth talking about. Here’s why. In an information society, the people who shape our information control the public conversation.