MetaCatholic

In a remarkable agreement across the theological spectrum, Dave Walker, Peter Kirk and John Richardson all rightly leap to Rowan Williams’ defence in the face of sloppy reporting of his Christmas interview. They are right to do so, because this kind of story seems to be self-propagating. Today in the Times, the slur continues with Gerard Baker:

The retreat continues, despite the best efforts of the Anglicans to keep making concessions to disbelieving modernity, as the Archbishop of Canterbury did again this week with his observation that we were obliged to treat the Christmas Story really as just a legend. Like Alfred and the burnt cakes, I suppose.

I left this comment on Baker’s post late last night / early this morning:

Have you ever considered checking your sources? I listened to the interview with the Archbishop, and he said that the Bible simply describes Magi coming to visit. It doesn’t say that they were kings, it doesn’t say there were three of them, and it doesn’t say one was black. It was all these additional details he described as legend. I suppose “Archbishop defends the Bible’s account of Christmas” won’t fit your template.

This kind of sloppy journalism is in part due to the fact that journalists often are, and think their readers likewise to be, very simple souls. So, to prevent the danger of too much thinking, they have a set of standard story templates: meta-narratives into which each specific news item may be squeezed. One of these is “Anglican bishops don’t really believe in God.” The corollary of this is that  because they are a) too nice to disagree with you and b) too wimpish to do so, a journalist can pour any shovel-full of libelous shit over them, and they frequently do so.

I doubt Baker actually reads his comments, but even if he does, he’s a journalist, so I expect him to entirely ignore the facts even when they’re pointed out to him. But I suppose, since it’s Christmas, I can always dream that somewhere, some day, a journalist might print a retraction.