Punting on the HHS Mandate & Campaign 2012

Last updated on: March 16, 2012 at 5:32 pm by Pia de Solenni

Punting on the HHS Mandate & Campaign 2012 2012-03-16T17:32:28-07:00 Pia de Solenni

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James Capretta over at NRO has a good piece on the latest “accommodation” on the HHS Mandate. National Catholic Reporter has an incredibly biased report, but they offer links to the relevant documents at the end of the article.

But I can’t pass up the opportunity to point out the bias from a so-called Catholic outlet.

According to NCR:

Taking a conciliatory tone and asking for a wide range of public comment, the Obama administration announced this afternoon new accommodations on a controversial mandate requiring contraceptive coverage in health care plans.

There’s nothing conciliatory about this. They’re just punting until after the election so that this won’t be an election issue and President Obama can keep his majority Catholic vote while wooing single women who won’t vote unless they’re worried about something really important like their birth control.

[In the meantime, there’s apparently nothing to accommodate individual business owners who for reasons of conscience or religion might not want to be forced to buy insurance that covers contraception.]

Here’s another messaging attempt:

On Wednesday, the leadership of the U.S. bishops’ conference dialed back its vehement opposition to the Obama administration with a statement released at the end of a two-day meeting of the bishops’ administrative committee.

“Dialed back”? If the Bishops were going to “dial back” they would not have issued the very statement in question, which included language like, “Government has no place defining religion and religious ministry.” That doesn’t sound dialed back to me, nor does the rest of the document.

But here’s the kicker in the NCR article:

News of the changes came as a senior White House official told NCR in an afternoon phone interview unrelated to the new proposed rules for the contraceptive mandate that while the Obama administration and Catholic leaders may have “some points of disagreement” over a number of concerns, the president has “dramatically expanded” the federal government’s connection with Catholic organizations.

Yes, NCR has every right to be talking with the White House and vice versa. But to present the story according to the White House talking points violates every principle of ethical journalism.

Capretta’s opinion piece is closer to journalism than that of NCR, a Catholic publication or Reuters, an official news outlet.

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