Media Black-Out of March for Life Could Backfire

Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer

(Feb. 8, 2008) News analysts are giving the major media a failing grade for its less than adequate coverage of the 2008 March for Life, and some believe the annual failure to accurately report on such a major news event leaves both sides at a disadvantage.

For the record, this year’s “coverage” was even worse than usual. Tim Graham, Director of Media Analysis for the Media Research Center (MRC) and Senior Editor of MRC’s “Newsbusters” reports that for the first time ever, ABC, CBS and NBC reported absolutely nothing about the March, or even mentioned that it was the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
“Put the word ‘abortion’ into Nexis and you get a black hole for that day, and the next day,”

Graham wrote in his Feb. 7 report. Fox News Channel provided a balanced report the evening of the March, but they were the
exception rather than the rule. Particularly unbalanced was the CNN story which ran on the day of the March and actually
promoted Planned Parenthood by discussing how much security is needed at its facilities.

“It is just four blocks from the White House, but that doesn’t make Planned Parenthood Federation’s Washington, D.C. clinic any more secure,” said CNN reporter Jill Dougherty on their noon report, The World Today. “It provides health, reproductive services and abortions. And in today’s America, that makes it a target.”

After describing the multiple layers of security and bulletproof glass doors of the clinic, she interviews a Planned Parenthood staff member who tells her, “There have been situations with health centers like ours where there have been bomb scares, actual bombs and people dying as a result.”

The fact that 50,000,000 babies have also died at these clinics was never mentioned.

According to Graham’s report, the print media did better with most newspapers running at least something about the March.

There was a one exception, however. The New York Times ran not a single word. The venerable Boston Globe ran a tiny blurb on page six of the January 23 issue. The Washington Post did a better job than last year, running a story on A-3 instead of A-10 and including a wide shot of the crowd to give readers a better idea of the size of the gathering.

On the day of the March, National Public Radio dedicated several segments to the Roe anniversary but made no mention of the March. Instead, “The afternoon talk show, Talk of the Nation, did a long segment on women discussing their abortions with after-abortion counselors Aspen Baker and Teri Reisser, who agreed women shouldn’t feel post-abortion guilt,” Graham writes.

The Miami Bureau Editor for the Florida Catholic, Ana Rodriquez-Soto, who attended the March, couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw television news coverage of abortion supporters at the March. She saw none the whole day and wondered where the reporter found someone to film.

“The secular media chose to focus on the few rather than the many,” she said in a commentary after the event. “I am appalled because I truly thought the media could play fair. I regard this profession so highly that I expected more from my colleagues.”

Distorting or ignoring news of such a monumental event in the lives of so many Americans is bad for both sides in the abortion debate. It leaves the pro-life crowd without encouragement, and causes pro-abortion forces to grossly underestimate the strength of the opposition.

Explains Rodriquez-Soto: “Judging from what I saw during my four-day stay in Washington – groups of teenagers filling hotel lobbies and walking down city streets, the pro-life movement is younger and stronger than the media would lead you to believe.

“The other side won’t see us coming.”

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