Catholic League president William Donohue explains a bizarre set of media mistakes that wrongly implied that a Catholic bishop has been accused of indecent exposure:
“The website, poynter.org, posted a story today entitled, ‘Hickory Bishop Accused of Indecent Exposure. The website, which has an entire section tracking the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, lists a story from the Charlotte Observer that ran yesterday (the story was based on an account taken from Charter Headline News, a cable news service). The story opens by saying, ‘two childcare workers have accused a Hickory bishop of exposing himself. Bishop Cartell Woods was charged with simple assault and indecent exposure.’
“We at the Catholic League had never heard of Bishop Woods so we checked the website of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. No bishop by that name is listed. We then found out that a Catholic website, diocesereport.com, posted the story on its home page. We contacted the Charlotte Observer and they had no knowledge of the story. That’s because poynter.org erred in attributing the story to the North Carolina daily. We then found out that the NBC affiliate in the area, channel 6, also reported the story. In all news stories , not one identified the religion of Bishop Woods.
“We then discovered that there is no Bishop Woods. There is a Pastor Cartrell Woods of the United Progressive Family Worship Cathedral in Hickory, North Carolina. This is the guy accused of exposing himself.
In short, this was sloppy reporting from beginning to end. And in this climate, when priests and bishops are under heightened suspicion, it is outrageous that false rumors are triggered about them. ‘Bishop” Cartrell is not one of ours. We hope that everyone in the media gets it straight and learns a lesson from this sorry story.”
