{"id":7250,"date":"2004-05-20T09:36:26","date_gmt":"2004-05-20T09:36:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/check_your_sources.html"},"modified":"2004-05-20T09:36:26","modified_gmt":"2004-05-20T09:36:26","slug":"check_your_sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/check_your_sources.html","title":{"rendered":"Check your sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Trib’s “public editor” (which I guess is another way of saying ombudsman?) addresses the issue of using Francis Kissling as a source for Catholic perspectives <\/a><\/p>\n

As journalists in the secular media, we are basically agnostic on these issues, for reasons both practical and principled.<\/p>\n

It is not for us to referee contests within the Catholic Church over who is legitimate and who is not. We don’t have the expertise to make theological judgment calls. Heck, we find it hard enough to get basic religious facts and terminology correct: Within the last month, in different parts of the Tribune, we have labeled a Methodist cleric a “priest” in a headline, had nuns being “ordained” and made the president-elect of Notre Dame a “Jesuit.”<\/p>\n

Our practice here at the Tribune–and in most news shops, I suspect–is generally to call people what they call themselves, and let the readers decide whether they are being honest or phony.<\/p>\n

So if Kissling and her organization want to call themselves Catholic, we’ll honor that. If the bishops want to contest that use of the name in the marketplace of ideas, we’ll report that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Chicago Trib’s “public editor” (which I guess is another way of saying ombudsman?) addresses the issue of using Francis Kissling as a source for Catholic perspectives As journalists in the secular media, we are basically agnostic on these issues, for reasons both practical and principled. It is not for us to referee contests within…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nCheck your sources - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/check_your_sources.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Check your sources - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Chicago Trib’s “public editor” (which I guess is another way of saying ombudsman?) addresses the issue of using Francis Kissling as a source for Catholic perspectives As journalists in the secular media, we are basically agnostic on these issues, for reasons both practical and principled. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}