I chuckle sometimes when I see the way in which people handle news tips and links from around the Catholic web. What I have in mind in particular is the special credence which is often given to certain websites because they market and present themselves as something more than blogs. I’ve written about this before, but I think it’s worth saying again: many “news” sites are just glorified blogs. Sure, they may have some paid staff or more competence to speak to certain issues than NY Times reporters, but in many cases, they’re simply summarizing articles which they’ve read elsewhere on the web, often in other languages, and then presenting them as “breaking news” exclusively available through their own site.

Yesterday, in our Ephemeris column, I had posted a link to a story from Germany about how a Lutheran pastor had been jailed for comparing the scourge of abortion to the Holocaust. I had seen this story at LifeSiteNews, which I think is pretty good at tracking down unusual pro-life related stories. But it’s not as though they sent their own guy to Germany of investigate - they were simply, like the rest of us, reading an article on the internet. And since they are, they should present it as the presentation of someone else’s story, not their own.

Turns out, they got the story just a wee bit wrong: While this pastor was jailed in the past for anti-abortion activities, this time around, he got the slammer for denying that the Holocaust ever happened. So, in good conscience, LifeSiteNews apologized and let their readers know of the mistake. But this is what comes of jumping on every little internet article one finds: you often end up with some “false information” - the words they used in their apology, whatever that means.

(They also once took a story from us, which I had, in turn, taken from a back page of CWNews in order to comment about it, and then they gave neither my commentary, nor CWNews, any mention.)

Now this is something that I like about Rorate Caeli and Fr. Zuhlsdorf’s blog: they don’t pretend that they’re running a Catholic “news agency” (even though they’re some of the best sites for news) - instead, they tell you their source and whether they think it’s at all likely to be true. CWNews, which is just Phil Lawler’s glorified links blog, tagteaming with the excellent Off the Record blog, by Diogenes, never stoops to post “rumors” on the main page, but we can see from the latest hubbub over the motu proprio that all Phil is doing is reading Fr. Z and Rorate Caeli - he’s not getting it from anywhere else. And while I have the impression that CWNews has a couple people working for it and getting paid, they don’t find nearly as many good scoops as New Catholic, who puts his knowledge of French and Italian to good use.

Half of being a Catholic “news agency” is simply being able to read French and Italian and then knowing where to look.

Fine. Then if you look at the New Liturgical Movement (Novus Motus Liturgicus - in case you were wondering), Shawn Tribe has all these links up from different Catholic “new agenices”, as though by their number they would corroborate the story. How long does it take to catch on?! They’re all getting the story from the same place. To repeat: I’m all for sharing the stories, news articles, and what not; what I’m against is acting as though what is in fact a second hand presentation is actually coming first hand via a news agency.