Media Attention

 

 

A media awakening: the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell finally warrants attention—Part One

 

By Dave Andrusko

Melinda Henneberger

We ended last week with the question, “Are we about to reach a tipping point in media coverage of the Gosnell murder trial?” I answered my own question, “Yes.” Before you could hardly blink, the deluge began.
We talked about why that might be the case. Something I touched on briefly– but not enough–is how the initial wave would reflect the media’s unending narcissism. That is, the question would be less about the barbarism that is that heart of a case in which abortionist Kermit Gosnell is charged with eight counts of murder and more about intra-mural sparring/defensiveness over why the major media missed the biggest abortion story in at least a decade.

But for our purposes, Result #1 is that the Washington Post announced it would have a reporter at the trial in Philadelphia as did the New York Times. Both were conspicuous by their absence from a trial that began its fourth week today. The curtain has been raised.Rest assured we will be watching to see how they can cleanse a case that turns the strongest stomachs.
We’re breaking our daily coverage of the Gosnell trial into several parts—in addition to the excerpts from the Grand Jury report that we’ve run every day since the trial began—to offer clarity and greater cohesion.

In Part One, we’ll discuss the media tsunami that it would be accurate to say began with USA Today contributor Kristen Powers column last week (See “Why the Gosnell murder trial is not ‘on every news show and front page,’” http://nrlc.cc/Yqcm1k).
Start with the given that here is nothing that gets reporters’ juices flowing like real (and imaginary) hypocrisy.  So to be accused of throwing overboard their responsibilities as journalists to favor of becoming pro-abortion shills (which Powers did not do—that’s my description of her indictment)—well, it hurt.

Powers key indictment ran just 107 words in length:

“Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams intoned, ‘A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,’ as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed — a major human rights story if there ever was one — doesn’t make the cut.

“You don’t have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life.’ It’s about basic human rights.”

Get that? You don’t have to be a member of National Right to Life, or read National Right to Life News Today on a daily basis to understand that what Gosnell stands accused of is a grotesque violation of basic human rights. And to offer a myriad of ridiculously absurd rationalizations for why the story is too miniscule to warrant attention only compounds the original neglect.
I’ve read hundreds of essays about Gosnell and his Women’s Medical Society abortion clinic. None was better than a piece that Melinda Henneberger wrote in 2011 for Politics Daily. Now writing a column for the Washington Post, she updated her comments this morning in “Why Kermit Gosnell hasn’t been on Page One.” (www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/she-the-people/wp/2013/04/15/why-kermit-gosnell-hasnt-been-on-page-one).
Why didn’t the Post write more? (Actually, why did the Post write virtually nothing would be more accurate, but…)

“I say we didn’t write more because the only abortion story most outlets ever cover in the news pages is every single threat or perceived threat to abortion rights. In fact, that is so fixed a view of what constitutes coverage of that issue that it’s genuinely hard, I think, for many journalists to see a story outside that paradigm as news. That’s not so much a conscious decision as a reflex, but the effect is one-sided coverage.”

At the risk of asking the obvious, why? Answer: a  threat to “abortion rights” is of singular importance only if most/virtually all reporters and columnists are invested in protecting abortion.
Henneberger’s column is not free of flaw but her ending is absolutely devastating. The excerpt is long but please read it. Her lead-in is that Gosnell appeared genuinely perplexed when charged with murdering seven viable babies after aborting them alive:

“Planned Parenthood’s [Alisa LaPolt] Snow was similarly obtuse, either willfully or out of habit, in testifying against a Florida bill that would have required medical care for babies who survive abortions. ‘If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,’ she was asked, ‘what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?’

“Her answer was a familiar one: ‘We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family and the physician.’

“Though it pains me to say so, that’s the same stand Barack Obama effectively took when he voted against a similar Illinois bill — even after the addition of a ‘neutrality clause’ spelling out that the bill would have no bearing on the legal status of the (you say fetus, I say unborn child) at any point prior to delivery, and thus could not be used to outlaw abortion.

“Recently, MSNBC host Melissa Harris mocked those who see a fertilized egg as a fully human person: ‘I get,” she said, ‘that that’s a particular kind of faith claim that’s not associated with science.’

“But I wish she and those who agree with her also got this: To insist that a baby born at 30 weeks, as one of Gosnell’s victims was, only qualifies as a person if his mom decides to keep him is also ‘a particular kind of faith claim that’s not associated with science.’”

Source: NRLC News