If you were reading Michael Sneed this morning in Sun-Times — “It’s over . . .” — with her scoop about the friendly deal struck by Antonio Davis, wife Kendra, and Michael Axelrod — “Sneed is told” etc. — you would have looked again to see what day’s paper you had, because if you had watched WGN-TV News at Nine last night, you would have known all about it.

If you were reading Rev. Richard McBrien’s column in the Los Angeles Catholic paper about a pro-life protest of the Boston mayor’s being welcomed to a Catholic Charities dinner in December and were a regular reader of the Boston Globe, you also would have checked dates to see who copied whom.  You would have seen right quick that the Globe’s Eileen McNamara got there first by a month, which is why McBrien’s employer, U. of Notre Dame, is doing its own checking.

“These folks do not just miss the Latin Mass; they miss Cardinal Bernard Law. … There’s Bill Cotter, pining for the good old days when Law would allow Operation Rescue to use Catholic churches as staging areas for illegal blockades of abortion clinics,”

wrote McNamara.

“These ultraconservative activists, for whom abortion is the only moral and political issue that counts, not only miss the Latin Mass but also the former archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who allowed Operation Rescue, a militant anti-abortion organization, to use Catholic churches as staging areas of illegal blockades of abortion clinics,”

wrote McBrien, who may be trying to do to much and may have wandered down the primrose path to column-writing.

. . . viewing WGN-TV news at 9 p.m. in anticipation of a story tomorrow night on senior(-citizen) bloggers in which I figure, I have found the show’s first 15 or 20 minutes the fastest-moving. clickety-click-produced news show on TV.  They move along briskly, with good pick of Chi-area stories.  Can’t help but notice, however, that:

* The on-scene reporter about young Axelrod and the Antonio Davises coming to terms, that A. “has the luxury of returning to private life,” apparently in reference to Davis serving a five-game suspension (near $70G worth!).  Flip slip of lip maybe, but it sounds as if A. got off easy.  Anyhow, D. has private life for five games with his family in Naperville.

* The Washington reporter saying Bush “claims” the NSA “spying” was legal — “says” would do — and Bush’s mounting “a PR campaign” to convince people.  “Campaign” would do.  It’s odd to characterize a government’s trying to justify itself as “PR,” which is usually considered private-sector stuff.  It also denigrates the effort.

* The anchor man’s story on chips that tell Someone Out There about us, imbedded in things we buy, was a pretty obvious playing to fears about privacy violations — complete with people on street saying they don’t like it: we were to expect they would like it?  It had Tom Cruise clips to go with it, from the sci-fi movie “Minority Report.”  WGN does not help its credibility with such a ploy.  The story had that old bias smell.