Since when is the media so interested in keeping America abreast of the latest news coming out of Ireland? A commission in Ireland just released a report detailing awful abuse of children who attended Catholic schools "from the 1930's to the 1990's, when the last of the institutions closed." And what's ensued is practically an all-out media frenzy.
The AP, Reuters, the New York Times, the LA Times, Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and many others are all over the story. At Google news, the story returns "about 1,531" results.
Yes, the stories of abuse are quite troubling, but it sure seems that the media is singling out the Catholic Church's misdeeds – again.
Today – not decades ago – there is egregious abuse happening with far-greater occurrence in our nation's schools. Yet where's the coverage?
For example, as we reported a couple weeks ago, the Los Angeles Times published an explosive and sickening front-page investigation revealing that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD, the country's second largest school district, by the way) "repeatedly" returned teachers and aides credibly accused of child molestation back to classrooms, and these individuals then molested children again. The article outlined mind-blowing indifference and incompetence by LAUSD.
How did the rest of the national media respond to the Times' jaw-dropping story? A search at Google news shows the story was almost completely ignored. Even many local media outlets in L.A. didn't cover the story.
Yet, two weeks later, we have a media going wild over decades-old episodes of abuse in a country across the ocean and thousands of miles away.
Like I've said before: When it comes to the awful abuse of children, it sure seems like the national media doesn't get too worked up unless the words 'Cardinal,' 'bishop,' 'nun,' or 'priest' is in someone's job title.
Double standard? Absolutely.
