British tabs use clickbait stories to intensify papal feud
(OPINION) Where do you get your news? This is a question I often ask of my journalism students. If being aware of the world around us hinges on the websites we read, then the answer to this question often reveals a lot about a person’s worldview.
Political polarization and news consumption is real. For example, even during a pandemic, Republicans and Democrats remain starkly divided in their attitudes toward journalists. Pew Research found recently that while 66% of Democrats say the news media’s COVID-19 coverage has been largely accurate, just 31% of Republicans. The viral Plandemic video has fueled conspiracy theories on platforms where users generate content like YouTube and Reddit.
Toss in decades of liberal media bias, the growing influence of conservative talk radio, advocacy social media and tweet-storms from President Donald Trump and it combines for a lethal cocktail of mistrust. It has gotten more difficult to differentiate between trustworthy news sources on Facebook and Twitter.
This brings me to a news outlet not afraid of covering religion (great!), but one that often fails in its delivery (that’s the bad part). What happens when journalists in this kind of newsroom take one the pope? How about two popes at the same time?
I’m referring to The Daily Express, a newspaper headquartered in London that was founded 120 years ago. You may have not heard of it, but you’ve certainly seen their stories in your Google News stream or retweeted by a friend on both the left and right. Like most online newspapers, the tiny “About us” section at the very bottom of the homepage reveals the following:
Express.co.uk is the digital arm of the Daily Express and Sunday Express – one of Britain’s most famous and trusted news brands.
Since 1900 the Express has been at the forefront of the news, and a fundamental part of the fabric of British life, crusading for truth and dignity and bringing millions of readers informed coverage of the most important world events in both print and online.
The Express has stood up for Britain, talked common sense, and fought for the rights of hard-working men and women across the country.
Every day we endeavour to provide our readers with the very best journalism, to inform and entertain. We are committed to reporting the news accurately, fairly and vigorously and will always hold those in authority to account.
We are a proudly conservative newspaper on the centre right of British politics but our core loyalty will always be to our readers above any political party or movement.
We have campaigned and crusaded for causes close to our readers’ hearts including ending the cystic fibrosis drug scandal, crusading for better treatment for veterans suffering from mental health problems and exiting the European Union.
We are delighted to be working with the The Trust Project within Reach PLC as we endeavour to make it simpler for readers of all ages and from all around the world to discover who we are and what we believe in.
There’s a lot to unpack there. Some words clearly stand out, including “trusted news brands” and “very best journalism.” The other ones are “proudly conservative newspaper” and “campaigned and crusaded.”
If you know anything about British tabloids (I worked for two American ones: the New York Post and New York Daily News), it is for them to campaign for issues and work as a moral force against, for example, politicians who cheat on their wives or steal from taxpayers.
We know The Express is conservative in its editorial positions in regards to British politics (often getting linked on the The Drudge Report, which helps its stories generate even more clicks), but what about how it covers the Catholic church and religion in general?
It should be noted that this is an area where The Express spends plenty of time on. It knows that roughly four million people in England and Wales, where the newspaper is primarily distributed, claim to be Catholic. It also chases online eyeballs across the English-speaking world — similar to other London-based tabs like The Daily Mail and The Sun — meaning that Catholic coverage is a very big deal.
The Daily Express is owned by Northern & Shell, a British publishing group, founded in 1974. Along with The Express, it publishes Sunday Express, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday, all newspapers known for their sensational headlines. It also published magazines like OK!, New! and Star until these were sold off in 2018.
As for The Express, here’s a sampling of just a few headlines from the past week:
* “Pope Francis bombshell: Benedict's plot to cause Vatican chief 'misery' exposed”
* “Pope Francis health fears: Vatican working for Pope tests positive for coronavirus”
* “Vatican urged to investigate ‘real reason’ behind Pope Benedict’s resignation”
* “Pope Francis seeks Vatican freedom as Benedict urged to take ‘real retirement’ “
* “Pope Benedict’s ‘fury’ with Pope Francis over holy water gaffe exposed”
Lots of coverage — but these stories all have something in common: Benedict versus Francis.
The Express covers Catholicism like some upcoming championship boxing match featuring two fighters sparring for world dominance. While doctrinal tensions within the church have grown during Francis’ papacy, these headlines offer up an exaggerated version of reality. The Express covers the Vatican as a soap opera featuring dueling popes going at each other — much like how it and other British newspapers have covered Queen Elizabeth and the Royal Family for decades.
Newspapers like The Daily Express have ginned up a papal war that may be non-existent.
Writing a column in The National Catholic Register, Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College, wrote a very good piece on May 8 under the headline, “Papal war? What papal war?” He starts off his commentary this way:
“It’s so rotten, gossip,” said Pope Francis in February 2014. “It fills the heart with bitterness and also poisons us.”
This has been a refrain throughout Francis’ papacy, as have warnings of outright “calumny.”
“Calumny comes from a very evil thing,” he said at the start of his papacy. “It is born of hatred. And hate is the work of Satan. Calumny destroys the work of God in people, in their souls.”
Francis has borrowed a more popular phrase: “fake news.” And just last week, he denounced “false news, lies that fire up the people and make them demand justice. It’s a lynching.”
I’m reminded of this as I watch an ideologically driven media stage a fight between Pope Francis and Pope Emeritus Benedict. The current fuel to try to fan a papal war are Benedict’s words in an interview with Peter Seewald. Those in the media who frame Benedict as a retrograde right-winger are using his comments to pose Benedict as the anti-Francis — the bad “traditionalist” trying to sabotage good Francis’ “progress” on issues that liberal journalists care about most, like abortion, same-sex “marriage” and homosexuality.
Such are the antics of a hostile media bent on tearing down Benedict and building up Francis for the sake of a political-cultural agenda. Much of the slanting is due to ignorance by liberal reporters who never fully understood either pope.
Kengor uses The Daily Express to make his point, while highlighting their shoddy journalism. It also should be noted that The Express also has no Rome or Vatican City correspondent (none that can be deciphered from either the use of a dateline or bios of the journalists whose bylines appear on these stories), meaning these stories are churned out of Britain. The stories are often based on a single source and loaded with background information from secondary sources — like information from a recent book or documentary — to bolster the headline.
I’m not alone in this assessment. Media Bias/Fact Check, a watchdog website, rates The Express as the following:
These media sources are moderately to strongly biased toward conservative causes through story selection and/or political affiliation. They may utilize strong loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes), publish misleading reports and omit reporting of information that may damage conservative causes. Some sources in this category may be untrustworthy.
Overall, we rate the Daily Express Right Biased based on editorial content and Mixed for factual reporting due to publishing conspiracies & pseudoscience as well as a few failed fact checks.
Nonetheless, British tabs have grown in their global influence, primarily because they are published in English and feature stories/headlines that make for great clickbait and sharing on social media platforms. Of the world’s Top 50 websites (a list that includes No. 1 Google and Facebook), Mail Online/Daily Mail currently ranks 44th when it comes to traffic.
This is where other British newspaper sites are hoping to be in the coming years. The Express has an average weekday daily print circulation of roughly 300,000. Its digital audience, according to one estimate, is 11.4 million each month.
Catholics in the U.S. for example, clicking on these stories need to know that not everything they read isn’t always true. They need to discern fact from fiction, good journalism from shoddy work. The editorial motivations and reputations of a news brand matters these days more than ever.
This post originally appeared at GetReligion.