KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
July 16, 2019
By Heidi Schlumpf
On Memorial Day, viewers who tuned into EWTN’s News Nightly for “news from a Catholic perspective” were treated to two previously recorded one-on-one interviews by anchor Lauren Ashburn.
In the first, a 10-minute sit-down with Mike Pence during his March visit to Ave Maria University in Florida, the vice president bashed “media elites and Hollywood liberals,” called Democrats “the party of abortion on demand, even the party of infanticide” and described President Donald Trump as “the most pro-life president in American history.”
In the second interview, Ashburn served up softball questions for 11 minutes with former White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders. The EWTN anchor gushed about the latest unemployment numbers and asked why the mainstream media hasn’t given more coverage to this accomplishment, held up a devotional book she learned Sanders reads daily before asking about religious liberty, and ended with a query about her favorite ice cream. (It’s mint chocolate chip.)
As part of a question that cited a poll showing white Catholics were holding a 44 percent favorable approval rating for Trump, Ashburn pointed out: “And I would just say that 44 percent number could be a lot higher if he came on to News Nightly.”
“We’ll work on that,” Sanders responded with a laugh.
The segment was clear evidence of how a television outlet once devoted to expressions of Catholic piety and conservative catechesis and apologetics has grown into a truly influential media empire, well connected to Republican politicians and the Trump White House. EWTN, where the “Catholic perspective” is unabashedly partisan, has also become the media star in a web of connections including wealthy conservative Catholic donors and some of the most public anti-Pope Francis forces in the Catholic world. Those connections, traceable through a maze of non-profit organizations, helped fuel EWTN’s development. It is a complex tale involving the matchup of a peculiar brand of U.S. style conservative Catholicism with conservative political ideology and economic theory.
NCR made repeated requests over nearly a week for comment from EWTN, but the network said it was unable to produce anyone to answer questions before publication.
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