Another look at "global Catholic" EWTN "truth tellers" -- who don't.
Here are PDF's of letters about actual defamation of an innocent man. CEO Michael Warsaw boasts of the highest ethics but brushes off betrayal called to his attention.
The electronic “global Catholic network,” EWTN, shocked me again, this time in March 2023, when I learned that its powerful chairman and CEO, Michael Warsaw, gave the keynote address at a Washington, D.C., conference titled “Journalism in a Post-Truth World.”
A report posted March 13 at his own National Catholic Register said Warsaw said that Catholic journalists are “called to do our part to be truth tellers” in a hostile world intolerant that the very idea of objective truth even exists.
The report added later: “What such times demand, especially of Catholic journalists, are courage and fortitude, Warsaw said, as well as a commitment to the highest standards of ethical journalism.”
(A separate story posted March 10 at the National Catholic Register reported that journalists Mary Margaret Olohan, Carl Cannon, and Clemente Lisi had been drawn into a panel at this conference about ethics. So their luster would rub off?)
“A commitment to the highest standards of ethical journalism”? Well now, Warsaw has been aware at least since early 2018 that interviewers at EWTN promoted to their audiences, and its bookstore sold, a defamatory book peppered with outright falsehoods against me, a practicing Catholic and longtime pro-life journalist, which cast me as a seriously sinful Catholic. The interviewers didn’t repent to the public of spreading the tales.
An advance promotion for EWTN President Doug Keck’s “Bookmark” program hailed well-known Missouri author James Hitchcock, Ph.D., as a “master historian and darn good storyteller” who “enthralls us” with the tales in his book, Abortion, Religious Freedom, and Catholic Politics. Does this sound like a strong recommendation from the “global Catholic network” for the reliability of the book and the literary satisfaction awaiting a reader who would purchase it? Here’s the promo text:
“Dr. James Hitchcock, master historian and darn good storyteller, enthralls us with the intertwinings of American history and Catholic politics in the past 40 years. Catch Abortion, Religious Freedom, and Catholic Politics on an upcoming EWTN Bookmark; the dialogue between Doug and Dr. Hitchcock will leave you wondering why you heretofore considered the topic dry and dull.”
However, the defamatory book had such serious falsehoods against me that I entered a confidential settlement about it in late 2021. But to this very day, EWTN never has informed me that it subsequently warned its audiences of how they were misled nor apologized for selling or promoting the damnation. I personally asked Mr. Warsaw to stop selling the book, but he only repeated back to me my request, without saying what he intended to do about it.
Dr. Hitchcock didn’t draw upon uncertain second-hand gossip or statements that might be open to confused interpretation. Instead, he cited individual published articles I wrote in The Wanderer national Catholic newspaper, but he inexplicably garbled them, twisted them, and concocted incidents. I listed some of his many errors in the first and seventh installments I wrote in a Substack.com series. (March 27, 2022, “Institutional Catholic corruption in some media claims?” And Aug. 12, 2022, “Part 7 of Catholic coverup: If you tell the truth, prepare to be punished.”)
I began this article by saying EWTN shocked me again. The first shock was in early January 2018, when I saw Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., interviewing Dr. Hitchcock for an hour’s segment about the book as though there were no problems with it, even though I had begun writing to Dr. Hitchcock a half-year earlier, at the end of May 2017 — as soon as I learned of, obtained and read the book — about some of his numerous falsehoods. Dr. Hitchcock replied only once, two years later, in June 2019, with only four sentences in a note that still didn’t acknowledge making a single error. He addressed me, Duggan, as “Mr. McDermott,” and he dated the letter June 16, 2019, even though it was postmarked June 11 and I received it on June 14.
Dear Reader, you already may be somewhat acquainted with this situation because of my series here at Substack.com. But Mr. Warsaw’s continued public association of his media business with the highest ethical standards requires more disinfectant. For the first time today I am posting (see below) PDF’s of some of the numerous letters I have written, and the one and only reply to brush me off that Mr. Warsaw ever made to me.
Catholic Mr. Warsaw washes his hands of any responsibility for Catholic EWTN to correct having directly promoted and sold the book defaming practicing Catholic me. This indicates EWTN’s lack of research before publicizing the book, because I had made various criticisms, online and hardcopy in the same Catholic newspaper that Dr. Hitchcock purports to cite when he maligns me, The Wanderer (which, as it happens, is a competitor with Mr. Warsaw’s own National Catholic Register).
Declining to advise its audiences of the serious errors EWTN had promoted, Mr. Warsaw said EWTN wasn’t aware of them prior to airing “that interview” by Fr. Pacwa. However, if media outlets were aware of their errors before publication, they presumably would not have published them. But that doesn’t justify shrugging off having to post the necessary notices in a correction box once they’re called to the offender’s attention, as the required public service to misinformed viewers or readers.
I wasn’t named during the two interviews aired with Fr. Pacwa and Mr. Keck. But the index of the book supposedly written by a “master historian and darn good storyteller” lists me on 20 pages, mostly with completely false claims — twice as many pages as Planned Parenthood received. Are trusting readers expected to doubt the defamation pushed by EWTN’s beloved “master historian” author?
Cutting to the chase, my PDF’s below begin with the Feb. 2, 2018, certified letter I mailed to Mr. Warsaw, and his Feb. 8, 2018, reply brushing me off. Then three more certified letters I wrote to him in early 2018, all of which he ignored — Feb. 15, Feb. 17 and March 20.
After this are two certified letters to EWTN interviewer and President Doug Keck, March 17 and March 20, 2018, both of which Mr. Keck ignored.
At the very bottom of these PDF’s is the first certified letter I mailed to EWTN on this issue, hand-printed on Jan. 3, 2018, addressed to Fr. Pacwa, with a copy to producer Jason Addington. I thought they’d certainly want to redress the errors quickly that the Pacwa program had spread. I was puzzled when a month went by with no acknowledgment. When I mentioned this silence to a friend here in Phoenix, he suggested going straight to the top, Warsaw, so I did so.
Below the PDF of my unanswered letter of March 20, 2018, to Mr. Keck is an early May 2020 email from EWTN’s manager of “advancement services,” Leslie Anne Rabbitt, with various errors of her own, which she sent to a concerned Phoenix physician. Yes, 2020, two years later, EWTN still kept getting it wrong.
Rabbitt said she had learned that Mr. Warsaw “wrote a very cordial letter to Mr. Duggan on June 8, 2018. His letter replied to letters Mr. Duggan sent to several people at. EWTN.”
Pause here for a moment. I do not consider Mr. Warsaw’s brushoff “very cordial.” His date was Feb. 8, 2018, not June 8. At no point in his letter does Mr. Warsaw state that he is replying on behalf of any other people to whom I personally also wrote at EWTN. Indeed, when I wrote my Feb. 2 letter and he replied to it six days later, I had not yet learned of Mr. Keck’s separate interview, so I couldn’t have referred to it then nor did Mr. Warsaw inform me of it. (Which is important in an additional way we’ll get to in a moment.) When I did learn of it, I wrote Mr. Keck twice in March 2018.
Ms. Rabbitt proceeds to use the same brushoff as Mr. Warsaw. If I have complaints about the book, she said, complain to the publisher. (Even though I told Mr. Warsaw on Feb. 2, 2018, that I already had complained to Dr. Hitchcock and to his publisher.)
“Additionally,” Ms. Rabbitt said, “Mr. Warsaw stated that the interviews [emphasis added] would not air again.” No, he did not state that. He mentioned only the Pacwa interview; he said nothing of the separate Keck interview that I also was to object to. When I later mentioned learning of the Keck interview in my March 20 letter to Mr. Warsaw, Mr. Warsaw didn’t reply at all.
Also, we must ask: If the interview(s) would not air again, why not? Serious error? If the errors were that serious, why would EWTN’s audiences not be informed of how their trust in the EWTN-lauded “master historian” had been betrayed?
Finally, Ms. Rabbitt expressed the hope that she has reassured the Phoenix physician that EWTN “directly addressed [my] concerns.”
What a lie. By the global Catholic network with the highest ethical standards.
After I read this email, I sent Ms. Rabbitt a lengthy email of my own. She did not reply then and never has. However, blustering EWTN attorney John Manos jumped in from out of the blue and proceeded to demonstrate how little he understood.
I can get to that next time.