Efforts to shape narrative pulled in or targeted government officials, local media figures
- ‘Crisis communications’: emails show how NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans helped New Orleans church spin abuse scandal
- What Saints and church officials said, and what their emails say
- The Saints clergy-abuse emails: five takeaways from our investigation
A number of locally influential civic figures and organizations are involved in emails showing how top officials at the NFL’s Saints and NBA’s Pelicans closely coordinated with New Orleans’ Roman Catholic church in a campaign to soften media coverage of a decades-old clergy-abuse scandal in their city.
The Saints and Pelicans as well as the church fought in court to keep the emails hidden from the public. One of the primary justifications cited in favor of keeping the emails confidential was to protect the identities of clergy-abuse victims. Yet none of more than 700 pages of emails reviewed by the Guardian and reporting partner WWL Louisiana named any such victims.