(Via The Catholic League.)

For years, the bowties at the New York Times and the Boston Globe have been harpooning the Catholic Church over a supposed lack of a "zero tolerance" policy towards abusive priests. (The truthfulness of the papers' claims are another matter. Many dioceses have had a "zero tolerance" policy for decades, and the United States bishops formalized "zero tolerance" as national policy in 2002.)

Meanwhile, Dr. Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, got a hold of the Times' Business Ethics Policy. Guess what? The Times and the Globe don't even have a "zero tolerance" policy themselves within their own walls. In fact, their guidelines say nothing about alerting authorities when an employee is suspected of child abuse!

Dr. Donohue commented:

Section IV of the New York Times Business Ethics Policy (which also governs the Globe), says, "Any employee who becomes aware of any conduct that he or she believes to be prohibited by this Policy or a violation of the law," is expected to "promptly report the facts" to "any supervisor or the legal department." (My italics.) It says nothing about contacting the authorities. Moreover, their policy says that if an employee has been found guilty, "appropriate and corrective action up to and including termination" will take place. Even then it says nothing about contacting the authorities!

Yesterday, we contacted three persons on four different occasions who work in the Boston Globe's Human Resources Department about this issue. No one responded.

This settles the issue. The New York Times and the Boston Globe find it unwise to adopt the same policy regarding employee misconduct—including instances where the law is broken—that it condemns the Catholic Church for not adopting worldwide. So if a priest is alleged to have groped a parishioner, the cops must be called. But even after an internal probe reveals that an employee at the Times or Globe is guilty of the same offense, the cops should not be summoned. The hypocrisy is vile.

Hypocrisy, indeed.