Media Awakening?????

 

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

 

By Dave Andrusko
As we talked about in “A media awakening: the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell finally warrants attention—Part One,” a fair number of the major media—but not the networks—are sort of expressing second thought about their abysmal coverage (essentially non-coverage) of abortionist Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial. Before I talk about the rebellious holdouts, it’s only fair to mention what appears to be a genuine apology.
The Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff—who often doubles as a stenographer for the Abortion Establishment—took back her dreadful tweet from last week. In response to a question, the gist of which was why no Gosnell coverage when she couldn’t write enough about anything that promotes the abortion agenda, Kliff had replied,

“I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime, hence why I wrote about all the policy issues you mention.”

It was an excruciating lame response, and Kliff began her story today (“The Gosnell case: Here’s what you need to know”) with

“When I described the case of abortion provider Kermit Gosnell on Twitter last week as a local crime story, I was clearly wrong. The egregious and horrifying crimes committed in the physician’s West Philadelphia abortion clinic have become a matter of national attention.”

But what matters is what follows, not an apology, as helpful as that might be. With a couple of minor missteps, Kliff’s summary was extremely useful.
There was more from the Washington Post, some of it good, some indifferent, some pretty much awful (see Paul Farhi).
We’re told (via the Post’s “Erik Wemple Blog”) that last week the Post’s executive editor Martin Baron said

“We believe the story is deserving of coverage by our own staff, and we intend to send a reporter for the resumption of the trial next week. In retrospect, we should have sent a reporter sooner.”

Even the New York Times’ ombudsman (known as the Public Editor) grudgingly conceded

“Judged on news value alone, the Gosnell trial deserves more coverage than it’s had, in The Times and elsewhere.”

But, of course, according to Margaret Sullivan, it had nothing to do with an organized decision on the part of the Times which is joined at the hip to the abortion movement and certainly the Times’ parsimonious coverage was not reflective  “of a vast, left-wing media conspiracy to ignore the trial because it may threaten abortion rights.”
The case just “wasn’t on their radar screen,” she wrote, only to add a couple of sentences later “And it’s certainly possible that journalists who were more in touch with conservative voices and causes would have picked up on the importance of this trial sooner.”
Nobody said it was “a vast left-media conspiracy.” But it is also true (obviously, I would think) that not only “conservatives” would be upset (to name just a few items)

• That viable babies would suffer “tremendous pain” when their spines would be slit;
• That this was “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body,” as Gosnell’s right hand man, Steve Massof testified.
• That at times (according to Massof) when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, “it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.”
• That Gosnell “ joked” that one baby was so big that “this baby is going to walk me home.”

We’ll talk about this more on Tuesday. Even by then we’ll see if the coverage of the trial has increased and whether the three major networks say a peep tonight about this mass slaughter.

Source: NRLC News