Bias

Last month America, influential Jesuit weekly, announced a Bias Contest, with cash prizes for readers who found the worst examples of anti-Catholic bias in a month's reading of the U. S. press (TIME, March 7). Wrote Rev. John A. Toomey, S.J., in announcing the contest: "It is anti-Catholic bias if it misleads readers on any Catholic question." Last week, announcing the prizewinners, America attributed bias to the following publications, in the following order: 1) Bergen Evening Record (Hackensack, N. J.), 2) The Apprentice (New York University undergraduate magazine), 3) Ladies' Home Journal, 4) Fact Digest, 5) Esquire, 6) Foreign Affairs, 7) the Portland, Ore. Journal, 8) Liberty, 9) the New York Times.

The Bergen Evening Record came to grief for running, in its "Voice of the People Forum," a letter attacking Jesus Christ, suggesting that he was the illegitimate son of Mary and a Roman soldier. The other publications, America thought, misled their readers on the Spanish war (three citations), birth control, ecclesiastical control in the Middle Ages, Fascism in Quebec, Catholic views on Mexico, the Church's oldtime attitude toward taking baths.

Father Toomey, who did most of the work on the Bias Contest, is a zealous, grey-haired priest, born 48 years ago in

Philadelphia, who fought in the World War, did some advertising work before beginning, in 1921, the long, hard studies of a Jesuit. Ordained in 1931, he was assigned to America's staff four years ago. Believing that much of the U. S. press is biased, or uninformed, on Catholic matters, Father Toomey has in recent months written four articles on "propaganda" in the press. Last month, before the Bias Contest ended, he helped set up a Catholic organization to deal with erring editors.

As a "visible working model" for Catholics throughout the U. S., a Press Relations Committee was formed in Manhattan, its membership representing 14 national Catholic groups like the Knights of Columbus, Catholic Daughters of America, Fordham Alumni, etc. The committee divided into subcommittees, one to watch for "anti-Catholic propaganda" in each important newspaper and magazine, with a view to beginning negotiations if a publication persists in being biased. Father Toomey denies that the aims of the Press Relations Committee resemble those of the Legion of Decency. Declared he: "The function of these committees is not primarily one of protest or criticism, but rather one of education and enlightenment. They will operate positively always, negatively only when the need so demands. . . . Good-will on both sides, negotiations conducted in an atmosphere of amity: these are the objectives. . . . The committees will endeavor to remove . . . blurred ideas on things Catholic; to demonstrate to owners, editors, reporters, columnists that the Catholic position on this or that question is much more reasonable than they ever suspected."

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