John Allen lets loose on the British press and reporting on religion – particularly Catholicism.

Over the years, I’ve found that the British press is the most likely to publish virtually any rumor about the Vatican floated in the Italian papers. Back in 2003, for example, when Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos celebrated Mass according to the pre-Vatican II rite in a Roman basilica, one Italian newspaper speculated that it would mark the end of a schism with the followers of late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The staggering improbability of such an outcome meant that virtually no one else picked up the report — except The Times, so the English-language Catholic world was atwitter with rumors based on thin air.

In November 2005, again following the Italian lead, the same paper reported that the Vatican would shortly drop its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favor of mainland China. While such a move has been rumored for decades, "shortly" came and went without the predicted development. In March 2002, British papers carried stories about a campaign within the College of Cardinals to force John Paul II to resign — based, again, on a speculative piece in an Italian paper which turned out to be overblown.

To take another spectacular example, The Daily Mirror carried a banner headline in March 2006 proclaiming that Benedict XVI would visit England in 2007. Not only was the story false, but no one from the bishops’ conference was even contacted prior to publication. Or, consider a Daily Telegraph piece from 2003 claiming that the Vatican was "suspending" talks with Anglicans due to the controversy over gay bishops, which was also false.

To top things off, this Monday, Feb. 19, The Financial Times carried a calendar item stating matter-of-factly that on Thursday, Feb. 22, Benedict XVI would issue a document approving the use of condoms under certain circumstances. Needless to say, no such document appeared.

All this without entering into complaints from some British Catholics about the way their media covered the sexual abuse crisis, though it’s worth noting that a BBC official publicly acknowledged bias concerning one broadcast, and a tabloid story suggesting the church had offered a notorious pedophile priest a bribe of £50,000 to buy his silence turned out to be based on forged documents.

To be clear, this is not about "spin," or whether a news outlet has a "line" hostile to a church. It’s about willful indifference to the facts, which in this business is akin to original sin. The pattern in the British press on religion too often seems to be "shoot first and check the facts later."

Explaining why this is the case would require a degree of cultural literacy about the U.K. I don’t possess. All I can say is that a disproportionate percentage of misleading religion stories surface in the British press.