In 2009 […] Catholic League President Bill Donohue invited me to write a feature article for the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst. My article, “Due Process for Accused Priests,” began by describing an important phenomenon.

In 2002, just as the national story of Catholic priests and sexual abuse emerged out of Boston to sweep the country, psychologist Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on a phenomenon called “availability bias.” It revealed the power of the media to not just report the news, but to reshape it to fit media bias, to cultivate it, to take a story’s small microphone and turn it into a megaphone.

Activist organizations have trained people to harness this force to sway what others adopt as a bias. It is not new, just newly analyzed. One of the most potent deployments of “availability bias” is one I have quoted before in these pages. It comes from Mein Kampf, the 1926 book by Adolf Hitler that gave rise to the Nazi party in Germany:

“The great mass of people will more easily fall prey to a big lie than to a small one.”

After my 2009 Catalyst article was published, I was subjected to an open assault by David Clohessy, Executive Director of the activist organization, SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Matt Abbott at Renew America forwarded my article to Mr. Clohessy and invited a response posted at Renew America entitled, “Imprisoned Priest, Sex Abuse Victim Clash.”