Denis Boyles of NRO agrees that the problem with journalists is that they have no idea what Christianity or Islam teaches, much less have a grasp on philosophy:
Part of the problem journalists face when they have to report on complicated, somewhat obscure topics, such as Roman Catholic dogmatic theology, is that graduate journalism courses like JOM926 may stress spelling & grammar, but completely at the expense of “faith & reason.” So maybe it’s not fair to blame journalists for the inanities in the week’s reporting of what was a very complex discussion by a scholarly pope concerning faith and reason in Christianity and in Islam. As you know by now, the pope quoted a 14th-century Byzantine whose millennial empire had been reduced to mere acres and whose people had been dispatched by the hundreds of thousands by Islamic armies who thought death was a suitable end for unrepentant infidels. The emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, ventured to a visiting Persian that surely there must be a better way to do missionary work. Somehow a graduate of JOM926 got hold of the pope’s speech, and that was all it took.Full article
