CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE NEW YORK TIMES

From Father Dwight Longenecker at Standing On My Head:

Campaign Against the NYT

Let's get a campaign going. Let's blitz the New York Times with emails complaining about Maureen Dowd's sleazy and false attack on the Holy Father. This means letters to the editor and a boycott of their advertisers. I'm not the only one. Bp Marzio of Brooklyn calls his people to 'besiege the New York Times' here and Thomas Peters the American Papist calls for a response here.

You can read what Maureen Dowd has written here. This first column made exagerated and false claims. That her attacks are false can be seen here and here and here.

A good and honest journalist would be corrected and apologize once she was proven wrong. Instead Dowd continues her smear campaign and repeats her lies here.

Clark Hoyt is the editor at New York Times. Here's his email: public@nytimes.com

Here are the rules: First, in the subject line write: "Fire Maureen Dowd". That will give the general impression. Letters should be brief, firm and indignant, but also intelligent and charitable. No rage. No anger. No rude words. No self righteous condemnations. Here's a copy of my letter:

Dear Mr Hoyt,

As a faithful Catholic I am grateful for any effort which will help rid our church of the few pedophile priests. Honest and fair investigative journalism is part of this righteous crusade.

However, your journalist Maureen Dowd is telling lies. Pope Benedict is not guilty of any crime in the case of Fr Lawrence Murphy. You and your staff had the facts. Rather than implicate Pope Benedict the facts actually exonerate him. There are only two options: that you and your staff did not bother to understand the facts, or that you willfully distorted them. As you are intelligent people I have to assume the latter.

Shame on your paper for publishing lies and continuing this intentional smear campaign against the Catholic Church during the holiest time of our year. Would you launch a similar campaign on Muslims during Ramadan about the prophet's marriage of a young girl, the institutionalized pedophilia amongst the Taliban or the Muslims shameful treatment of women? I think not.

I have decided to never purchase your paper and to boycott all your advertisers and I will be encouraging all I know to do the same.

Yrs sincerely,

Dwight Longenecker

If you have a blog, do a post on this. You can copy and paste my whole post if you wish. Compose a brief email with Hoyt's email address and encourage people to write. Send it to all the faithful Catholics on your list and ask them to forward to their lists.

Finally--does anyone have the time to go through the NYT and make a list of their advertisers? I think a Catholic boycott of all companies who advertise in the NYT and on their website is in order don't you?