Few subjects in recent years have resulted in newsrooms printing as many retractions, updates and clarifications as have Pope Francis and the Middle East.
Some media watchers allege that the frequency with which newsrooms misreport on both the Middle East and Pope Francis is due to laziness, bias, wishful thinking or a combination of the three.
“Until journalists recognize their prejudices, which may in many cases be subconscious and therefore hard to acknowledge, I doubt the situation will improve much,” Tom Gross, a former Sunday Telegraph Middle East correspondent, told the Washington Examiner’s media desk.
Though news organizations dispute charges that their reporters harbor bias in stories on the Vatican or events in the Middle East, a dustup this weekend involving comments that the pope supposedly made to the leader of the Palestinian Authority has raised questions of why newsrooms so often get tangled up in reporting these topics.
This weekend, when the supreme pontiff met Saturday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, initial reports on the meeting between the two leaders stated that Francis called Abbas an “angel of peace.”
This claim, which originated with the two print journalists who attended the meeting, the Associated Press’ Nicole Winfield and the Irish Times’ Paddy Agnew, was pushed out by major newsrooms including the AP, Agence France-Presse, the New York Times, Reuters and the BBC. An online furor among pro-Israel groups that saw the pope’s praise for Abbas as inexcusable soon followed.
However, it appears that there is disagreement over whether Francis actually called Abbas an “angel of peace.”
Instead, the pope may have urged the Palestinian president to become an “angel of peace,” rather than praise him as one, according to reports from Spain’s Zenit and Italy’s La Stampa: Vatican Insider.
English-language news outlets in the United States, including the New York Daily News, The Weekly Standard, National Review, and Catholic Herald Online, also claimed that Francis only urged Abbas to be an “angel of peace.”
Additionally, as noted by critics who also dispute that Francis called Abbas an “angel of peace,” initial reports of the meeting also missed some of the crucial context of a bronze medallion bearing the image of an angel that the pope gave to the Palestinian president.
Colloquially known as the “angel of peace,” the totem is often presented to visiting dignitaries whom the Catholic leader hopes to encourage to reject violence and instead embrace progress in pluralistic directions.
In other words, unlike the Medal of Valor, the bronze medallion is an aspirational medal, but some misunderstood it to mean that Francis sees Abbas as an angel of peace already.
Francis also gave Abbas a copy of his 2013 philosemetic encyclical, “Evangelii Gaudium,” wherein the supreme pontiff wrote, “We hold the Jewish people in special regard because their covenant with God has never been revoked…dialogue and friendship with the children of Israel are part of the life of Jesus’ disciples.”
Disagreement over the exact wording of Francis’ remarks – as well as the widespread omission of details regarding his gifts to Abbas – lends support to those who already allege that bias and laziness gets the best of newsrooms when it comes to the head of the Catholic Church and the Middle East.
“The misquote seems to have started as a bit of sloppiness, but it took on a life of its own because a lot of people really wanted it to be true,” Omri Ceren of the Israel Project told the Examiner.
A spokesperson for the New York Times declined to comment on the issue except to direct the Examiner to a follow-up article published Monday, titled “Vatican Seeks to Quiet Uproar Over Pope’s ‘Angel of Peace’ Remark,” wherein the Grey Lady suggested that furor directed at Francis was of his own doing.
The BBC did not respond when asked by the Examiner to respond to claims its reports were inaccurate.
Much like the Times, however, the BBC in a separate article seemingly placed the issue of accuracy squarely on the Vatican’s shoulders, publishing an article Monday titled “Vatican clarifies Abbas ‘angel of peace’ comments.”
Ceren told the Examiner, “A quick Google search could have prevented what, in retrospect, seems like a pretty obvious mistake.”
“It took just a few hours to find the full statements online, without any knowledge of Spanish or Italian. Any news organization could have called the Vatican’s press relations team and gotten the full statement even faster,” he said.
The Associated Press and the AFP, for their part, dispute characterizations that they got the story incorrect.
“The quotes we used in our story on May 16 were taken from a pool report, which was used by AFP and other major media,” a spokesperson told the Examiner. “We have no reason to doubt the pool report and the Vatican has not disputed the direct quotes.”
“However, on May 18, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said that the pope’s ‘angel of peace’ comment was clearly meant as an encouragement,” the spokesperson added. “We immediately ran this in a second story with the headline: ‘Pope ‘angel of peace’ Abbas comment was encouragement: Vatican.'”
A spokesman for the Associated Press challenged critics who claim the global news agency got the Francis story wrong.
“AP Rome correspondent Nicole Winfield attended and covered last week’s exchange between Pope Francis and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” he told the Examiner.
“After others questioned AP’s report that the pope said to Mr. Abbas, ‘you are an angel of peace,’ AP reviewed written notes and a videotape of the meeting that supported Winfield’s English-language translation of the pope’s remarks, except for the omission of two words, the Italian ‘un po,’ or ‘a bit.'”
The spokesman then pointed the Examiner to a correction published Monday evening wherein the AP reported that Francis had said “you are a bit an angel of peace,” rather than “you are an angel of peace.”
He also called the Examiner’s attention to separate news reports that remain quite certain that Francis had, in fact, called Abbas an “angel of peace.”
Critics, including former AP correspondent Matti Friedman, maintain that newsrooms nevertheless tend to be extraordinary sloppy when it comes to reporting on the Middle East – particularly Israel – and point to other stories they got wrong.
Israel did not, for example, open levies in 2015, flooding the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not appear to have gone over the White House’s head when he accepted House Speaker John Boehner’s, R-Ohio, invitation to address a joint session of Congress. Netanyahu also did not flip-flop on his commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Similarly, critics point to a long list of media missteps involving Pope Francis to allege more bias in the press
In 2013, for example, Francis was praised and reviled as an anti-capitalist due to misreporting on some brief, off-the-cuff remarks he made regarding the poor and economics. Francis also never said that all dogs go to heaven, he never called for the 10th Crusade, he has not embraced same-sex marriage, he has not called for church leaders to soften their stance on abortion and he didn’t invent the sacrament of reconciliation.
These many media missteps fuel the critiques of those charging that bias is behind reporters’ mistakes.
“The media is full of stereotypes and mistakes about many issues, yet when every allowance has been made, the sustained bias against Israel is, I believe, in a league of its own,” Gross said.
He also alleged that there is a real desire among “liberal elites” to “bash” Israel and to make impossible demands of it.
Ceren maintained that there is bias working both ways and that some of it may be calculated to drive a wedge between conservative factions.
“There’s a sort of campaign going on right now to portray the Vatican as anti-Israel and to poison Jewish-Catholic dialogue,” Ceren told the Examiner. “Certainly that had nothing to do with the initial reporting, but it helps explain why the easily-debunked quote spread so quickly.”
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This post has been updated to note which journalists attended the meeting Saturday between Abbas and Pope Francis.
