At NewsBusters, Matt Hadro rushes to defend the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue from less-than-fawning interview on CNN:
CNN’s Chris Cuomo turned a discussion on Pope Francis’ recent interview into an ugly personal attack and sharp lecture of his guest, the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, on Friday’s New Day.
The fracas began when Cuomo lectured Donohue on the Pope’s statement that the ultimate focus of the church is “salvation” and not one particular moral issue. He said “it really sounds like you’re one of the people [Francis] is sending this message to, to be fair, Mr. Donohue, isn’t it?” Cuomo clearly had a bone to pick with his guest. [Video below the break. Audio here.]“I mean, you have bashed on these issues for years and years, most infamously recently saying that the church had a homosexual problem, not a pedophile problem. I mean really incendiary, flagrant, divisive stuff,” Cuomo continued.
Hadro didn’t mention that Donohue’s remarks about homosexuality and pedophilia are not just “incendiary, flagrant, divisive,” they are completely wrong. Experts — including those who worked on a study of sexual abuse in the Catholic church that Donohue has previously touted — agree that homosexual acts do not necessarily correlate to a homosexual identity, and that same-sex pedophilia does equal homosexuality.
Hadro then huffed that “Cuomo repeatedly drew from Donohue’s past statements in an effort to attack him for being so controversial. He did no service to any CNN viewers who were hoping to gain insight on Pope Francis’ words.” But Hadro doesn’t explain why Donohue shouldn’t be held accountable for his inflammatory rhetoric.
One reason for that also went undisclosed by Hadro — his boss, Brent Bozell, is on the board of advisers for the Catholic League. That’s a clear conflict of interest that should have been disclosed.
And for someone who purports to abhor “ugly personal attacks,” Hadro sure didn’t hesitate to engage in one against Cuomo’s family:
Cuomo’s brother Andrew is the Democratic Governor of New York who supports abortion rights, pushed for gay marriage, and lived with an divorced woman while he himself was divorced. All of the above are serious violations of church teaching and are public scandals.
But then, double standards are the coin of the Media Research Center realm.