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.