Bottom Line: John Allen Jr. (Crux Now Editor) ignores Canon Law which does not presume consent. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. In this case, there's ample evidence, the documentary falsified the Pope's remarks.

"There’s a PR corollary that could be said to go like this: "No matter who breaks it, if you don’t fix it you bought it."

There is no such "PR corollary" except the one you just invented. A quick search on Google shows this "PR corollary" appears in "about" eight places all quoting your article (see screen-cap at bottom).

"It means that no matter what a leader actually says or does, if he or she allows an impression to be created and doesn’t publicly disown it, then it belongs to them."

So let's apply Mr. Allen's newly minted corollary to its creator and see what happens. Suppose some random idiot claims Mr. Allen looks like a child-molestor testifying in court and therefore he is one. The idiot argues further Mr. Allen's looks like a sex-offender grooming a child in a video-chat so that's probably where it was taken and proof enough of the man's creepy appetites.

Does the label of child-molestor "belong" to Mr. Allen since he isn't publicly disowning every baseless claim and "impression" created against him?

Even if he does, the label still could "belong" to him. Double-standards are rife in Mr. Allen's profession. If he doesn't refute the claim, it "belongs" to him, true or false.. And if he bitterly denounces the accusation? A jjournalist who's every bit as biased, dishonest, and agenda-driven as Mr. Allen can simply quote Shakespeare's Queen Gertrude: Mr. Allen "...doth protest too much, methinks"

I'm sure Mr. Allen and his attorneys would be quick argue otherwise in court. I'm certain they would sue for libel if anyone seriously applied Mr. Allen's asinine logic to its creator... or supported a Catch-22 with "proof" from Hamlet.. Happily most of us have better sense than Mr. Allen, no one is doing so, and his lawyers will just have to go hungry this week.

No, Mr. Allen. Canon Law oesn't work that way and a big-shot "Vatican expert" like you should know better. Secular law doesn't work that way either, neither does reason, and neither does responsible unbiased journalism.

Only the "court of public opinion" works this way and ONLY when biased journalists like you pervert the ever-referenced "freedom of the press." Then and only then are charlatan like you allowed to fabricate a "PR corollary" when you wouldn't last a heartbeat if it got turned around on you.

You fabricated your "PR Corollary" just like Evgeny Afineevsky fabricated Pope Francis' "support" for homosexual acts

INB4 the inevitable excuses that the "quoted phrase" is just Mr. Allen's but it's reflective of "a real PR Corollary" that's widely used everywhere except... well... you know, it's phrased somewhat differently. I can write that kind of self-serving nonsense just as easily as Mr. Allen could and build a whole Tower of Babel's worth of excuses around his carefully-worded escape-hatch the PR corollary , "Could be said to go like this..."

In truth, it could be said that's Ginger Roger's cue to join Fred in lovely duet of equivocation. Mr. Allen's going to need that kind of star-power to explain away getting caught in what reads very much like an outright lie.