BishopAccountability.org
	The Furor over Weakland’s Bronze By Bruce Murphy Milwaukee Magazine January 12, 2010 http://www.milwaukeemagazine.com/murphyslaw/# And: They Love George Stanley! Is there any organization in town that is more clueless about public relations than the Milwaukee Catholic Archdiocese? In the midst of what should have been a celebration, the installation of new Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki, the archdiocese is instead engulfed in controversy over whether it should have involved former Archbishop Rembert Weakland in the ceremony and whether a bronze image celebrating his tenure is inappropriate. The criticism has been led by Peter Isely, the implacable director of the Midwest chapter of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. You could argue that Isely always sees the negative about the archdiocese, but he is a smart, savvy strategist who seizes on any chance to dramatize the plight of those he represents against an archdiocese he portrays as uncaring. And time and again the actions of the archdiocese reinforce his arguments. I don’t know what the archdiocese could have done about the installation ceremony. Not allowing any role in the ceremony for a longtime Milwaukee archbishop like Weakland would seem a tough thing to do. But the decision to immortalize him in bronze is another matter entirely. Whatever the achievements of Weakland’s tenure (and he was among the most acclaimed and perhaps the smartest of bishops in America), he has a shameful record when it comes to protecting children from sexually abusive priests. So the last thing you’d want, if you’re the archdiocese, is something that revisits this controversy. Yet the bronze relief pictures Weakland “in the biblical scene of Jesus protecting the little children,” as Isely puts it. Archdiocesan officials say Isely is misinterpreting the art. Perhaps. But the archdiocese doesn’t deny the obvious: that the figures in the bronze (including the Virgin Mary and St. John) also include children. And officials didn’t imagine this would cause a controversy ? More recently, the archdiocese told the Catholic News that the bronze image was commissioned years ago, before the evidence of all the clergy abuse arose. Isely (naturally) denies this. So the archdiocese involves itself in yet another controversy, as to when exactly enough evidence of abuse had arisen for officials to realize that a sculpture of Weakland with children might be in poor taste. The smart thing would have been to immediately confess a goof and commission a new tribute – and with no particular haste. Any good PR person would know this. Why doesn’t the archdiocese get it? The answer, I fear, is this: Officials are still far more concerned about the feelings of Weakland, his longtime lieutenant Bishop Richard J. Sklba, and other officials who got enmeshed in the clergy abuse scandal. That attitude, of course, is what led the church to protect abusive priests in the first place. And that attitude, if it is indeed still entrenched, will make it very difficult for the archdiocese to ever overcome this scandal. They Love George Stanley! Never mind my critique last week of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series on Afghanistan written by managing editor George Stanley. Elsewhere, they seem to love him. The respected National Public Radio program “On the Media” (a program I admire) offered a sympathetic take on the series this past weekend. Interviewer Bob Garfield seemed to be aiming for a human interest piece on an editor writing about his son in battle. This was a soft-edged interview, and Stanley was winning and warm (almost cuddly, actually) in his responses. Garfield noted the strength of the reporting, praising “significant details that had somehow eluded [Garfield] in the eight-plus years of writing about the battle on the ground there.” Meanwhile, a column by Columbia Journalism Review assistant editor Alexandra Fenwick called the series “a hybrid of reportage and personal essay written in plainspoken language that comes together to strike a chord that the best newspaper columnists achieve.” But both compliments reinforce my argument. Fenwick’s comparison to newspaper columnists is on point; and had this run as a personal essay, I would have no quarrel with it. But it ran as a splashy four-part series that attempts to answer important questions about Afghanistan. As for Garfield’s comment, the very strength of Stanley’s reporting gives it a certain authority, a kind of fly-on-the-wall realism that seems rigorously objective. Which makes it harder for readers to understand when it isn’t. Garfield asked Stanley whether his bond with his son might have prejudiced his reporting. Stanley’s answer is that he obviously wasn’t objective, and the newspaper labeled it as a series by a father of a soldier. “I really think that readers – that they know how to weigh all that stuff,” Stanley added. Do they? To take one example, Stanley offered a one-sided description of the Taliban as an evil group in league with al-Qaida without offering the contrary view of many Mideast experts. Are all readers so informed about Afghanistan that they’ll realize this is just a conflicted father writing and the issue really isn’t that simple? And if all readers are really so knowledgeable, why was this four-part series needed in the first place? My objection to the series really involves about 10 percent of it. The fact that the more egregious writing I noted last week wasn’t simply cut from the stories is a problem in itself. But it's possible it reflects a deeper problem of bias in how the Journal Sentinel has covered the Iraq War – a bias I suspect helped lead to my 2004 story on Iraq being killed. The latter point earned me this rebuke from one reader last week: “Talk about sour grapes,” he wrote. “So your story got killed. Let it go man, you sound like crybaby.” (Ouch.) OK, man, I'll let it go. The Buzz -I have praised reporter John Schmid's excellent JS series on problems with the U.S. Office on patents, but his latest update Sunday – portraying Milwaukee as a weak performer when it comes to winning patents – had problems. If you look closely at the tables in the story, you’ll see Wisconsin ranks 15th in patents issued, and most of those were issued in the metro Milwaukee area. Yes, Milwaukee is far behind Madison on a per capita basis, but so are most cities in America. Certainly this state and metro area could do better, but the fact is, we are actually above average in patents issued. Making that clear to readers, though, would kill the story’s potential to run on Sunday’s front page. -Meanwhile, this article also reminded readers of Schmid’s many stories cheerleading the idea that Milwaukee could become the Silicon Valley of water technology. Midway in the story, Schmid writes that "many water-technology companies in the Milwaukee region received only a smattering of patents last year, certainly not enough for the region to boast that it can become an international hub of water research and technology." Wow. That is a startling change in his point of view. And the newspaper's. It suggests that UW-Milwaukee researcher Marc Levine's scathing report blasting the idea that Milwaukee was poised to become a water industry hub has begun to have some impact. Among other things, Levine noted that Milwaukee ranked a dismal 19th among the top 40 American cities in the number of water patents issued. His report, issued in September, also blasted the Journal Sentinel for writing countless news articles (most of them by Schmid) that failed to independently investigate the claims made regarding this city's water technology potential. For that very reason, the newspaper never did a news story on his report. But it would appear it's had an influence nonetheless. Dare I suggest, with pun intended, that the tide has begun to turn on the water issue? We'll see. -Has the media's coverage of the mayoral takeover been unfair? Pressroom writer Erik Gunn considers the issue in our new, ahem, online column. -And was Aaron Rodgers to blame for the Packers' playoff loss? The Sports Nut considers.
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