How the Secular and Catholic Press Covered Pope Benedict's Statement On Immigration

Get Religion looks at the coverage of the Pope's statement on immigration and how it was covered in the press. Too bad he did not mention the Simpson's cartoon and maybe the secular press would have spent more time on it.

See Pontificating on immigration

Here is a part:
It’s not that the church’s views — at least those presented in the first paragraph above — haven’t been well documented in the press. I think the media actually has done a generally good job of reporting on the Catholic church’s position that refugees are to be welcomed. But the second message, which, admittedly, may be a new emphasis, hasn’t been well covered. The Pope thinks that countries have the right to regulate their borders and that migrants need to integrate into their host country? That’s interesting stuff.

I figured that in this election year when border regulation is having a serious impact, this would get some noteworthy coverage. But it appears that it hasn’t, at least yet. The Associated Press issued a four paragraph piece. Reuters had seven graphs. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal mention was only a few dozen words. The Catholic press did more thorough coverage. Here’s Catholic News Service’s piece and here’s Catholic Culture, which said that the message sounded several familiar themes about treating all refugees with dignity while being more explicit about the right to defend borders and the need for migrants to assimilate.

But in general, this nuanced message was too nuanced to receive significant media coverage. It really is a shame when only the loudest or most extreme voices in contentious fights are heard.