Friday, December 26
Word From Rome
John Allen writes:
"One difference between an American and an Italian view of the press was on display at the panel.
During the Q&A session, Phil Pullella of the Reuters news agency, a veteran Rome correspondent, asked whether Navarro felt Catholic journalists should be Catholics first and then journalists, or vice-versa. Pullella offered three examples of where this tension arises, one of which concerned Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as archbishop of Boston in December 2002. That story, Pullella noted, was on the front page of every paper in the world that had been following the sex abuse crisis -- except for L'Avvenire, the official newspaper of the Italian bishops, where it ended up on page 18.
Interestingly, it was a left-wing journalist and ex-priest, Gianni Gennari, who came to the defense of L'Avvenire.
"I imagine Law is a little bit part of the family there," Gennari said. "If my sister does something awful, I'm not going to write it across the front door of my house. The editor probably decided that the whole world will be talking about this, we don't need to be taking shots too."
That, in a nutshell, captures a key difference in Anglo-Saxon and Italian mentalities. The Anglo-Saxon approach favors objectivity, while Italians emphasize loyalty to friends."
