My mom noticed an editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch today, titled "It seems no calamity can stop spite or hatred", following typical mainstream media style in it's blatant and non-fact-checking bashing of the Catholic Church.
The article states, concerning foreign aid offered by Israel but refused by Sri Lanka:
"In Rome, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, accused Israel of refusing to help flood victims in Sri Lanka. The paper scolded that it was time for "a radical and dramatic change of perspective" among people who are "too often preoccupied with making war...That cut about a people 'too often preoccupied with making war' is particularly savage... And in any case, would an Italian newspaper with close ties to the Vatican ever hint that, say, Germans were a people 'too often preoccupied with making war"? Or radical Muslims? Inconceivable."
"The Vatican newspaper was misinformed."
No, I'm sorry Mr. Mainstream Media—you were misinformed.
The truth is, somehow, someone either accidentally or purposefully mistransleted to original L'Osservatore Romano article, and the media quickly jumped on the Catholic-bashing bandwagon, without even fact-checking. The truth? The L'Osservatore Romano was chiding Sri Lanka for not accepting aid from Isreal; not the other way around.
I'll be surprised if this error gets as much as 200 words as a correction in a future Post-Dispatch. If that. Similar articles were posted in various other columns. A few have been pulled, but many of these false stories remain.
For reasons such as these, I distrust mainstream media.