UNITED STATES
GetReligion (Blog)
June 24, 2018
By Terry Mattingly
If you have not had a chance to do so, check out the waves of reader comments that we have received in response to GetReligionista Julia Duin’s epic post at the end of last week entitled “The scandal of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and why no major media outed him.”
As you can see from the headline, a major theme in this post is directly linked to life on the religion-news beat. On a technical level, in terms of journalism craft and ethics, why was it so hard for veteran reporters – like Julia – to nail down the final details of hard-news reports about McCarrick and the years and years of rumors and allegations about his sexual abuse of seminarians (among others)?
Part of it, of course, was getting people to go on the record. In some cases, people even had documentation to help support their horror stories. But, but, but … They just could not go on the record.
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