UNITED STATES
GetReligion
Terry Mattingly
When you hear the term “breaking news,” what do you think of?
I think news consumers, at this point, are pretty skeptical about this term. They know, of course, that there really is such a thing as breaking news. Major decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court are breaking news. The attack on the GOP softball team was breaking news. Another van mowing down citizens on London Bridge would be breaking news.
Also, there are @POTUS tweets that justify the “breaking news” label. There are, in my opinion, many more that do not. And have we reached the point where “Game of Thrones” developments are truly “breaking news”? If not, I’m sure that’s just around the corner.
Anyway, like a few religion-news consumers, I received the USA Today email push product that pinned the “breaking news” label on a long, long news feature with this headline: “Across the nation, priest sexual abuse cases haunt Catholic parishes.”
Now, I have followed clergy-abuse cases since 1982 or thereabouts – press coverage exploded in 1985 with the Gilbert Gauthe case in Louisiana. Here at GetReligion, we have poured out oceans of digital ink discussing the many waves of this story. It’s a horrifying scandal and, along with the ghastly cover-ups by some bishops, totally deserves the word that Catholic conservative Leon J. Podles used as the title of his brutal, horrifying book — “Sacrilege.”
But when I saw this “breaking news” label, I immediately wondered: “Really? What has happened now?” Let me stress that I think there are angles of the scandal worthy of new and in-depth coverage (along with the massive and largely uncovered scandals in other major institutions, such as public schools).
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.