Since big media get our brickbats for reporting irresponsibly, when coverage is notably responsible they deserve a bouquet. What a pleasant surprise to see the Sunday Denver Post on May 20, a week after Mother’s Day, veer off its customary secularist-feminist line with a pair of long, well-balanced, fair-minded, and indeed almost favorable articles by Electa Draper about Catholics and contraception.
“Catholic Church defends birth control stance amid strong opposition” ran on Page 1. It was accompanied on the inside jump page with a startlingly good sidebar entitled, “Catholic Church touts godliness of natural rhythm method.”
I could quibble (as a Protestant, not a Catholic, by the way) with parts of both pieces – such as the scare quotes around “religious freedom” in an early graf of the first piece, and the misleading reference to “godliness” in the headline of the second one, whose text emphasized not the rhythm method’s spiritual advantages but its practicality.
But overall this big Sunday package represented solid, straight-shooting journalism that was all the more commendable since it cut against the grain of Post editors’ well-known viewpoint. To those editors, and to Electra Draper, kudos this once from Tammy.
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