In the Annals of Really Lame Headlines

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-us-company-merkel-meeting-comments-president-accidentally-calls-america-corporation-a7636196.html

Why the Traditional Media Are Dying

News reports surrounding the resignation of Pope Benedict have been predictably horrid. The profound ignorance of all things religious among the journalists is one thing, but why do they not have editors to check even basic facts? This looks not just like incompetence, but idiocy.

Watching Al-Jazeera English service; in announcing the resignation, they refer to Benedict’s pontificate, gratuitously, as “one of the shortest and most turbulent in history.”

One of the shortest? He’s been pope for almost eight years. Average reign of all popes: 7.2 years.

One of the most turbulent? Try the popes of the Great Schism, the Avignon Captivity, or the Reformation. Benedict’s reign was not even one of the more turbulent of the last century, which has seen two world wars, Nazism, Communism, Vatican II and the SSPX.

More such media failures here. I especially love the NYT's cited evidence that Benedict's reign was "contentious":

When he took office, Pope Benedict’s well-known stands included the assertion that Catholicism is “true” and other religions are “deficient;” that the modern, secular world, especially in Europe, is spiritually weak; and that Catholicism is in competition with Islam.

Telegraph Overrules Pope on Catholic Doctrine

Good news for longsuffering Canadians. Or what has to pass for good news in Canada. It turns out our own CTV is not the worst when it comes to misreporting the latest news from the Catholic Church. Here's what the subscribers to Britain's Telegraph woke up to read:

The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift

The Pope has signalled a historic shift in the position of the Roman Catholic Church by saying condoms can be morally justified.

Who knew? 

Certainly not the Pope.

CTV Says Catholic-Bashing Can Be Justified for Journalists

The headline over at CTV today reads, in big blue type,

"Pope says condoms can be justified for male prostitutes"

The full relevant excerpt from a new book actually reads:

There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.

Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

Seems to me obvious dishonesty to change "first step in the direction of moralization" to "justified." By that reading, if one were to point out that when Himmler started killing Jews with gas, invisibly, instead of shooting them, this was at least a first step towards revealing an awakening conscience, the accurate headline would be

"Blogger Steve Roney Says Gassing Jews Can Be Justified for Nazis." 

I can't believe the journalists are simply too stupid to be able to read properly. No, malice must be aforethought.