In the Spring 2001 issue of Paraklesis, Mark Distefano [in "We Still Believe in Monsters"] quotes editor Robert J. Samuelson as saying, in reference to poor reporting, "People do not like to be disabused of familiar, self-serving, and satisfying ideas.  There's a tendency to suppress doubts, dismiss inconvenient inconsistencies, or deny contradictory evidence."

I trust that Mr. Distefano has not forgotten that such sentiments are often voiced about boylovers. That these words are true should not excuse us from the necessity of keeping from jumping to hasty conclusions about the motives of people whom we criticize.

I once talked with a boylover who said that he could never understand the public's desire to assume that boylovers who cause harm to children do so out of evil motives. Never, he said, do people consider the possibility that a boylover might genuinely love and care about a child, and that his harmful behavior came from tragic error rather than from malice.

Ironically, this gentleman's comments came on the very week that I myself made a tragic error in my approach to a discussion I was holding with a group of boylovers. I was immediately branded by one of the boylovers as a sensationalistic journalist, who had come onto the boylove boards for the express purpose of damaging boylovers. The possibility that I might simply have made a mistake never entered his mind.

While Mr. Distefano approaches the topic of journalists' irresponsibility in a sensitive manner, speaking of their horrible results as being due to a human desire to oversimplify complicated matters, I think we should take special care not to replace one monster with another. In saying that minor-attracted adults are not monsters, we shouldn't fall into the trap of suggesting that journalists who report this are themselves monsters.

Most tragedies committed by journalists, like most tragedies committed by boylovers, are due to error rather than malice. If we don't keep this in mind, we will never understand why so much bad reporting takes place, nor will we be able to tackle the problem. If we convince ourselves that most journalists present stereotyped images of minor-attracted adults out of political motives, then we will not know how to counsel a sincere and deeply ethical reporter who interviews twenty people who are supposed to have expertise in pedophilia, receives stereotyped images about minor-attracted adults from nineteen of them, and then goes off to write a report.

Mr. Distefano only touched upon the problems that have plagued journalism throughout its history and are especially prevalent in our soundbite era. Insufficient research, the desire to emphasize dramatic facts (usually the most sensationalistic facts), and tight deadlines (which can only be completely understood by someone who has had five minutes in which to prepare an article that absolutely must run in the next issue) can explain, but does not fully excuse, the shoddy journalism that routinely wins critical acclaim.

Similarly, of course, the protest of a child abuser that he genuinely thought that the child he abused enjoyed and benefitted from the sex does not fully excuse abuse; nor do similar protests by erring marital partners. No act of harm can be fully excused; always, as Mr. Samuelson says, "There's a tendency to suppress doubts" and other evidence that would make clear to the erring person that he had headed down the wrong road. But to say this is simply to say that we are human--we err because we have certain inbuilt tendencies toward failing to see evidence that contradicts what we most want.

What I most missed from Mr. Distefano's otherwise fascinating article was the Christian context of irresponsible journalism. Any journalist worthy of his title--whether Christian or not--is aware of how easy it is to be a poor reporter, and will be on the lookout for common errors (for example, asking himself whether the research he has encountered in his necessarily brief examination of a big issue is in fact representative of the field as a whole).

But Christian journalists enjoy a special advantage over some of their colleagues, for they are nurtured in a tradition that says humans tend naturally toward evil. The obvious correlation to this statement is that journalists tend naturally toward poor reporting. We should not be surprised if bad reporting takes place, any more than we should be surprised that sin abounds among all humans, including boylovers. Rather, we should be delighted when we encounter exceptions to this rule, and we should try whenever we meet people who have engaged in harmful behavior (whether they be boylovers who have committed child sexual abuse or journalists who have committed horrendous acts of irresponsible journalism), to keep in mind the important saying: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

--Heather Elizabeth Peterson,
Editor, Philia News
www.philianews.org