Complicit Media

Headline from Time Magazine's website:

The First Casualty of the Pope's Islam Speech

Not to let the mullahs have all the fun of gun-jumping, Time's headline posits the following:

A) The Pope's speech was about Islam
B) The Pope is to blame for Islamic reactions to his talk at a university.

Now, I can excuse religious zealots in developing nations for going mad. The educational standards in those places are low, they don't have access to the entire transcript of the Pope's lecture, and their religious leaders have everything to gain by getting their people amped up and outraged.

I cannot excuse journalists in the West, as we teach reading (at least used to) and some degree of logic in our universities, we have access to everything the Pope's ever uttered in public, and we pride ourselves on being literate and civilised.

I will try to be charitable, and say that, in the interest of saving headline space, poor word choices were the result. I'd hate to think that Western journalists are actually trying to foment more Muslim outrage, as a way to tear down the Catholic Church, the advocate of a theology that is anathema to Western Liberals.