Joseph Goebbels couldn't have done it any better.

The American Spectator outlines the how the mutually reinforcing effect of bias flogs non-stories into scandals.  Specifically, the New York Times gets out of context snippets of information from a lawyer who has a specialty of suing Catholic Churches, which it then publishes as uncritical fact, which then helps the business development of the lawyer, who acquires more clients, and a more favorable litigation environment, from the publicity that the New York Times gins up against Catholicism.  The Spectator notes:

In other words, for Mr. Anderson, business is good. It is good because of a "wave" of accusations set off by his own efforts. The fact that goes without mention here is that the Times was the paper that published those accusations. Later in the article, the Times describes this reality a little more clearly:

The New York Times was working on a different article last month when a reporter contacted Mr. Anderson. He provided documents about the Murphy case describing how efforts by Wisconsin church officials to subject Father Murphy to a canonical trial and remove him from the priesthood were halted after he wrote a letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, asking for a cessation of the trial.

"It shows," Mr. Lena [a lawyer representing the Holy See] said, "how you can both create a media frenzy, and then capitalize on it. Jeff is very, very good at creating intense media interest, and then shaping a narrative for the press to write their stories around." He added later: "He serves these media events up like nice little meals for reporters to chow down on, and they do."

This is the best reporting the Times has done so far in its coverage of the pope's "scandal." They are revealing the fact that they uncritically passed along a report straight from the most interested party imaginable, Anderson. In doing so, they created the perfect political atmosphere for him to proceed with his case against the Vatican and his various other lawsuits against the Church.

But the Times did not have time to contact the canonical judge handling the same case.

This is the kind of coordination that counted as evidence of a "crime against Humanity" according to the OSS prosecution of the Nazis.

[Via Wintery Knight.]