My campaign re the Vatican visit (also posted in GDP) [View all]

[LAS14]

A lot of DU time is taken up with a day or so at a time of sorting out what really happened in some situation. Understandably there is partial information, second hand information, wishful thinking, etc. I sincerely doubt that there are anywhere near as many outright lies as people are accused of.

In the case of Sanders’ trip to the Vatican this syndrome repeated itself. But in this case we were presented with stark extremes of truth vs spin regarding whether or not Sanders met with the Pope. At the spin end, major outlets like ABC, NPR, CNN and the Washington Post took the Sanders campaign hook line and sinker. Sanders had a meeting (in one case “an audience”) with the Pope. At the truth end, some wonderful person got a video of the Pope explaining the circumstances of their polite handshake as he was leaving the building where they both spent the night.

I’m very frustrated by bad information and delight in clarification. So I undertook a campaign to post a response to everyone I could find who was under a mistaken impression about the encounter.

I got a lot of push back from people chiding me (to put it mildly) for putting so much importance on this relatively minor event. It’s true that the whole trip annoyed me. Sanders showed bad judgment in setting up a situation which the public could so easily misunderstand, even without the spin meisters’ efforts. I do think Sanders has a genuine interest in the Pope’s message about inequality, but his staff should have known better. But cynically go after the Catholic vote (to whatever extent that played into it) was not my motivation. Rather, I wanted to take the rare opportunity to correct misinformation in a really un-arguable fashion…. The Pope’s own words. Of course, I guess, this being DU, some will accuse him of lying…

And, in case anyone has missed it, here, in the Pope's own words, is what happened re "the meeting."