The media coverage of Catholic sex abuse cases is a major aspect of the academic literature surrounding the pederastic priest scandal.
Earliest media coverage In 1988, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw aired "Sins of the Fathers", the first nationally-broadcast report on Roman Catholic priests who sexually molest children. In his lead-in describing this "serious and embarrassing problem", Brokaw advised viewers "It's not widespread, but it does exist."
Extent of media coverage According to a study conducted jointly by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, both of which belong to the nonprofit, nonpartisan Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C.:
In 2002, when a Boston Globe series began a critical mass of news reports, the coverage mostly emanated from the United States. In 2010, however, much of the reporting focused on child abuse in Europe, with English-language European newspapers publishing three times as many articles on the scandal as U.S. papers. The sheer amount of coverage this year came close but fell slightly short of 2002. ("A Nexis keyword search of 90 media outlets found 1,559 stories mentioning the scandal in the first four months of 2010, just 77 fewer articles than in a similar four-month period in mid-2002.)" From mid-March (when the pope's role in a decades-old abuse case in Germany came under scrutiny) through late April, clergy sexual abuse was the eighth biggest story in the mainstream media, beating out coverage of nuclear weapons policy and the Tea Party movement. The scandal found little traction in new media, however. Across the millions of blogs and Twitter posts tracked in PEJ's weekly monitoring, the clergy abuse scandal registered as a leading topic in only one of the six weeks analyzed. Pope Benedict XVI was by far the biggest news maker, featured in 51.6% of the stories about the scandal in the mainstream U.S. media (including print, radio, network television, cable TV and online news sources) during the six-week period from March 12 through April 27. All other individual figures combined, including cardinals, bishops and priests, appeared as lead newsmakers in just 12% of the stories. An examination of three Catholic news outlets reveals wide differences in their approaches. The National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly, devoted fully two-thirds (66.7%) of its Vatican coverage to the scandal. Two Catholic news services, on the other hand, devoted considerably less of their Vatican coverage to the story. Catholic News Service gave it 44.8%, and the Catholic News Agency gave it 33.3%. Among the religion blogs published by high-circulation U.S. newspapers, those operated by USA Today and The Washington Post contained the most entries on the clergy abuse scandal - a total of 12 each during the six weeks studied.
Boston Globe coverage However, it was not until early 2002 that the Boston Globe coverage of a series of criminal prosecutions of five Roman Catholic priests thrust the issue of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests into the national limelight on an ongoing basis. The coverage of these cases encouraged other victims to come forward with their allegations of abuse resulting in more lawsuits and criminal cases. In a May 2002 interview with the Italian Catholic publication, 30 Giorni, Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga claimed that Jews influenced the Boston Globe to exploit the recent controversy regarding sexual abuse by Catholic priests in order to divert attention from the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. This provoked outrage from the Anti-Defamation League, especially since Maradiaga had a reputation as a moderate and was regarded as a papabile. Before the Boston Globe coverage of the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese, handling of sexual abuse allegations was largely left up to the discretion of individual bishops. After the number of allegations exploded following the Globe's series of articles, U.S. bishops felt compelled to formulate a coordinated response at the episcopal conference level. In addition to matters regarding priests, the Boston Globe also reported in 2002 on matters with church staff, including a pastoral care and CCD worker, Paul Merullo, and a teenager, in Woburn, Massachusetts, which had occurred in 2000 but only made public in 2001. Merullo was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. In 2003, the series of articles in the Boston Globe received a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. The Globe was honored, according to the Pulitzer website, "for its courageous, comprehensive coverage ... an effort that pierced secrecy, stirred local, national and international reaction and produced changes in the Roman Catholic Church."
Criticisms of media coverage
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