FURTHER THOUGHTS ON JUDAS: On 12 January the Times of London published an article (scroll down) that claimed that there was a "campaign led by Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science ... aimed at persuading believers to look kindly" on Judas. But on the 20th I linked to a Zenit article that quoted Monsignor Brandmüller to say:

Reading the Times I discovered that a campaign exists to rehabilitate Judas and that I am the leader," the Vatican official said. "I have not talked with the Times. I can't imagine where this idea came from.

The original Zenit link seems now to be dead, but you can read the article here.

Since the 20th I have been monitoring both Google and the Times website and, although a number of other media outlets including Reuters, have picked up the Vatican's repudiation of the Times story, the Times itself (at least if its dodgy search engine is accurate) has ignored it entirely. What is going on here? If the Times has misrepresented Monsignor Brandmüller's position, it owes him a retraction and an apology. In any case, it owes its readers an explanation.

Is this another example of the professional media's much vaunted system of fact-checkers and editors? I can't say I'm impressed. The original Times article is still online. If they had the standards of a decent blogger, they would have added an update at the end of it as soon as the Zenit piece came out, linking to it and explaining the discrepancy.