Archbishop Chaput: USCCB's involvement "misrepresented" by So We Might See

The situation is tangled, but the key question is this: Did the group So We Might See, led by United Church of Christ Office of Communications, Inc. Executive Director the Reverend J. Bennett Guess—and funded in part by billionaire George Soros—knowingly claim the support of the USCCB in petitioning an FCC investigation into remarks made by "several TV and radio commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs"? Jeffrey Lord of The American Spectator reports:

The American Spectator has learned that Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput has specifically denied that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops agreed to an attack on talk radio and Fox News personalities. Contrary to an FCC filing and media package released by the interfaith group So We Might See, a "Media Justice" project run by the United Church of Christ and funded in part by left-wing billionaire George Soros. The USCCB Communications office also says specifically to a complaining Catholic "that, although USCCB is one of the groups constituting So We Might See, USCCB did not join the petition of which you complain."

<snip>

In fact, what the USCCB had agreed to, says Archbishop Chaput, was specifically outlined in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission on July 29, 2009, in reference to a "Petition for Inquiry into Hate Speech in Media." The letter, obtained by the Spectator and written at the request of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, cited no one in talk radio or on Fox News, nor did it mention either talk radio or Fox News in general. Nor did it ever say the USCCB was signing on to the So We Might See Petition, the impression that was given by the e-mail from the United Church of Christ to its own members. Instead, the USCCB said it supported "a broad public forum in which to raise and debate (hate speech and other issues) in a respectful manner."

<snip>

The Archbishop's response, accompanied by a copy of the USCCB's July letter to the FCC, is striking in terms of the difference between the actual position of the USCCB and as it was presented by Guess.

• Reverend J. Bennett Guess: "Together, we can express our concern about the frequency and tone of anti-immigrant remarks made by several TV and radio commentators, such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and Lou Dobbs."

• Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: "The USCCB is not specifically attacking any public journalist or commentator."

Read the entire piece. Interestingly enough, one of the definitions of "hate speech" used by So We Might See is, "False Facts consist of incorrect, exaggerated, or de-contextualized facts." Hmmmm.

Comments

[Evan]

"Interestingly enough", I click on the link to the article and the first thing that I get is a pop-up ad for Michelle Malkin, of all people.

"Hmmmmm" indeed!

In any case, I don't understand the fuss. Rev. Guess has made a more specific statement about which figures are of particular concern w.r.t. hate speech. Archbishop Chaput has distanced the USCCB from naming any particular names. The concerns of a Spectatpr reader have apparently been answered. Must we make this into a UCC scandal? Is there good reason to say that Rev. Guess acted in bad faith, or would it be more charitable to assume that this was just a misunderstanding (which, I take it, occurs often enough when such broad coalitions are formed)?

[Carl E. Olson]

Evan: Ah, yes, the nasty, mean Michelle Malkin. "Of all people." Meaning...what? Careful, I'd hate to see you engage in hate speech.

When I mistakenly switched the order of "Evangelicals" and "Catholics" in my post about the recent ECT document on Mary, you immediately assumed I did it to somehow disparage Evangelicals (how, I'm not sure), and accused me of being immature, apparently not stopping to consider that changing the order can hardly be construed by any rational creature as a slight, or that it might have been an error (which it was). Yet here you are downplaying as a likely "misunderstanding" the use of the USCCB's name in a politically loaded situation by a group with an obvious axe to grind against politically conservative talk show hosts. Now, if the group comes forward and admits it was an error, I'll be happy to post that information. Until then...

[Evan]

I'm saying nothing about Michelle Malkin except that I take her to be a likely member of the set of people that Rev. Guess has in mind when he names a few specifically. What's interesting is the company that all of the parties in question keep. The UCC and Rev. Guess obviously have their partisan affiliations. I'm just saying that in writing against such partisan activism, the Spectator makes rather clear its own affiliations through the ads that it broadcasts. That's neither good nor bad- it's just to say that everyone who is speaking for or against an investigation of particular conservative commentators seems to have a stake in the disagreement. And I take that to be interesting. I take the Malkin ad to be annoying, but only in the sense that I find any pop-up ad annoying. I don't know anything about Malkin outside of her reputation, so I can't say anything about whether she is nasty or mean, on- or off-air.

I did indeed accuse you of being immature, and if it's any consolation I did so because I took you to be too clever not to have simply made an honest mistake. I hereby apologize for my own error and set you in the good company of the UCC, which I will continue to read as in error- not with the intentions of "downplaying" anything, but with the intention of reading charitably, as I said before.

[Mark Brumley]

because I took you to be too clever not to have simply made an honest mistake.

Do you mean this seriously, Evan? I can't tell. Surely you don't think cleverness precludes error?

[Evan]

First, a correction: of course I meant to write, "too clever to have simply made a mistake" rather than, "too clever not to have simply made a mistake."

Second, of course I don't think cleverness precludes error, nor will you find me telling Carl that he's too clever ever to have made a mistake. But surely in certain instances we can find "it was a mistake" less likely than "it was deliberate" on the basis of a person's cleverness. Otherwise I don't know what cleverness would mean in these sorts of situations.

[Mark Brumley]

Surely in certain instances. But not all. And not here and now.