KIRSTEN POWERS VS. THE ESTABLISHMENT MEDIA

Last Thursday, Daily Beast columnist and Fox News political analyst Kirsten Powers - a liberal - ripped the Establishment Media a new one for failing to adequately report on the ongoing trial of Kermit Gosnell, the Butcher of Philadelphia, who is charged with murdering seven newborn infants and a patient seeking an abortion.  

Powers is a former Democratic political consultant who worked in the Clinton White House, and she supports most liberal causes, but she hasn't spent her entire career in the media or the professional Left. She grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska, understands the values of the Heartland, and is a practicing Christian.

Her article in USA Today provoked a variety of responses from members of the Establishment Media that helped break their deliberate and collective silence on the trial.

Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast acknowledged she "should have" written about the "horror Doc's" clinic. The Washington Post made the stunning admission that "we should have sent a reporter sooner." Dylan Byers, Politico's media reporter, flatly stated that "Gosnell should be front-page, top-of-the-hour news by primetime tonight."  Conor Friedersdorf, a writer for the liberal website Atlantic Online published a column with the headline: "Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Front-Page Story." Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg compared the Gosnell story to an Eli Roth movie and concluded, "It's remarkable that it took this long."

Sadly, it's not that remarkable.  In fact, it's exactly what we've come to expect from the Establishment Media.  If protecting The Narrative requires ignoring a story then that's the way it has to be.  As if the journalistic malpractice wasn't bad enough, the obedient proggies in the media refuse to even acknowledge their bias.  They insist that they represent what's "mainstream" in this country and, therefore, anybody who disagrees with them must be "extreme."  Take Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's legal analyst, for example:

"Well, the people making those [media] criticisms are by and large conservative. They are saying the liberal media is trying to protect abortion rights by not showing this horror show. I don't buy that at all... It's a business decision. We are not operating with the political agenda here. We pick stories, by and large, for reasons that we think people would be interested. I don't think we're covering this up."

A business decision, huh?  That's interesting because everybody knows the rule: If it bleeds, it leads.  As Valerie Richardson of the Washington Times noted last week:

"Not every murder trial receives prominent national coverage, but the Gosnell case would seem to contain all the ingredients of must-see television: a formerly respected community leader accused of unspeakable acts; the death of a young immigrant woman; a parade of former employees offering graphic testimony on the gruesome deaths of more than 100 just-born infants; and even the implication by the doctor’s lawyers that the charges have been motivated by racism. Dr. Gosnell is black and his clinic was in a mostly minority neighborhood."

There were other attempts at pushback.  The chronically obtuse Kevin Drum of Mother Jones called the Gosnell trial the right-wing's pet rock for April.  Irin Carmon of Salon.com scoffed at the idea of a Gosnell coverup.  Another Salon writer, Alex Seitz-Wald, initiated the meme "where were conservatives before this week?"



On Sunday, the Washington Post's Paul Farhi wrote a CYA piece titled "Is media bias to blame for lack of Gosnell coverage? Or something far more banal?"

Could it be, as conservative bloggers have charged since shortly after the trial began March 18, that the media had taken a pass because Gosnell — who stands accused of killing seven newborn infants and one mother — is an abortion doctor whose alleged crimes run counter to the mainstream media's supposed support for abortion rights?

That's the way the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group based in Alexandria, has framed it. In multiple commentaries published since last month, the group has hammered the lack of coverage, citing it as evidence of liberal media bias. "The media elite are passionate about abortion and passionate about defending it," says Tim Graham, the MRC's director of media analysis, in an interview. "This is a story that threatens the abortion rights agenda... It's bias by omission." Neither Graham nor any of the other critics have offered evidence for their suspicions.

Really, Paul Farhi?  Really??

What's so particularly stupid about the claim that pro-life, religious and conservative press didn't cover Gosnell is that it doesn't account for the fact that tons of people did learn about the Gosnell case, despite the lack of mainstream media attention. Where does Farhi think everyone learned about this case if not there?

But what's also so stupid about the "but those guys didn’t cover it either" (in addition to it being laughably false) is that complaints about mainstream coverage are just that: complaints about mainstream coverage. Appealing to coverage decisions by ideological outlets doesn't change anything about the complaints of mainstream coverage. That the media take cues from ideological outlets is clear, as we saw with the Komen, Fluke and Akin outcries. But if they're going to take cues, they need to take cues from a wide variety of resources. Clearly, pro-life media is nowhere on their radar.

The most devastating part of the story, though, is what Farhi tries to characterize as something banal and mundane. It's the most self-indicting thing I've read since Sarah Kliff's tweet to me (curiously unmentioned in Farhi's story) dismissing Gosnell as "local crime." Check it out:

Martin Baron, The Post's executive editor, offers a more mundane rationale for the newspaper's lack of coverage: He wasn't aware of the story until Thursday night, when readers began e-mailing him about it. "I wish I could be conscious of all stories everywhere, but I can't be," he said. "Nor can any of us."

Added Baron, "We never decide what to cover for ideological reasons, no matter what critics might claim. Accusations of ideological motives are easy to make, even if they’re not supported by the facts."

Wow.  But as some wise person said: If you're pro-abortion would you want details like this to get out?

The jury in the murder trial of Kermit Gosnell was told this morning that the embattled abortion practitioner kept at least 47 babies in odd places at his clinic such as cat food jars and other containers. …

But the most shocking portion of today's hearing revolved around Gosnell's habit of storing the bodies of babies he butchered in abortions.

"This morning’s testimony from the medical examiner discussed remains of 47 babies found in cat food and cherry lime ade containers," says Cheryl Sullenger of Operation Rescue, who is in the courtroom listening to the trial. "All containers contained bloody fluid and human remains."

She said it took the medical examiner, Dr. Gulino, five days just to catalog the containers of fetal parts and the examiner also examined feet and lower extremity found in jars of formaldehyde belonging to five babies Gosnell killed. The ages of the unborn children ranged from first trimester to 22 weeks and the latter baby was possibly viable.

Back to Kirsten Powers:

The problem is that the media apologists are battling a straw man. The column that started the firestorm over the media blackout didn't claim that the mainstream press had "never" covered Kermit Gosnell. I know, because I wrote it.

The column, and the ensuing outrage—and much of the outrage came from people with vaginas despite Carmon's egregious and divisive claim that it was just the patriarchy rearing its ugly head—was specific to the fact that the mainstream media had not covered the trial of Kermit Gosnell, which started March 18, 2013. I am going to repeat this, because a starling number of people on the left, including New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, either cannot grasp this or are intentionally ignoring it. Repeat after me: "The problem is that the trial has not been covered." That the Times ran one story about Gosnell in January is hardly relevant to the trial that started in March.

It is the trial that has included spectacular and headline-grabbing testimony from Gosnell's former assistants and workers. It is the trial that has been largely ignored outside of local media and activists on the right and left. This, despite the normal obsession with murder trials (Good Morning America has done a 10-part series on the Jody Arias trial). It is the trial—rife with grisly details about an abortion doctor who maimed and killed women and babies—that was ignored, despite The Washington Post's, The New York Times's, and network evening news's usual obsession with all things abortion related.

And it's not just the Establishment Media but the so-called feminist groups who are, typically, silent when topic is not exactly helpful to their agenda.

I can only think of a handful of times in my eight years as a Fox News contributor that I've discussed abortion. The people who obsessively cover it and anything vaguely related to it are those in the mainstream media and in the left-wing media, which is why their silence on this is so remarkable. Mollie Hemingway did yeoman's work chronicling how faithfully The Washington Post's health reporter, who covered Todd Aiken, the Susan G. Komen controversy, and the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, didn't write a single story on the Gosnell trial. No abortion regulation is too small for the mainstream media to cover; no stupid comment about abortion by any Republican goes unnoticed. So her disinterest in this trial is inexplicable.

But while the left has alternately attacked the right for its alleged lack of interest and for paying too much of the "wrong sort" of attention, I haven't heard a lot about the near silence from the feminist organizations that lecture us endlessly about how they stand for women's health. I find the claims now that feminists were deeply upset about poor minority women being abused and killed along with their babies a little tough to believe. A search for "Gosnell" on NOW's website yielded only two hits, both from 2011. Search for "Gosnell" on the League of Women Voters website and you will find nothing. The same search on the NARAL and Planned Parenthood sites returned the same number of hits: zero.

Media bias exists not only in how they cover stories, but in their choice of stories to cover:

It was fine to dwell at length on the Newtown, Conn., shootings, because those could be blamed on the evil NRA. But writing about these dead innocents might be a political liability instead of a political asset. It might have been awkward for President Obama.

Perhaps more dangerously, extensive coverage of the Gosnell trial challenges the absolutism of the pro-abortion crowd, as LauraW at Ace's place explains:

The problem with absolutism is that it shoots itself in the foot. Truly radical pro-choicers do not understand that the assumption that abortion primarily kills very tiny, unviable blobs, is the very thing that keeps abortion legal. It is in fact the only thing keeping a majority of people ignoring the subject.

In the case of abortion, this is the social/ political compromise that exists within the non-ideological crowd (most people): Many are willing to say that abortion is wrong (or at least not good), but the majority of these are also willing to allow it, as long as the understanding is that 'a clump of cells' is being eliminated.

As long as the belief persists among most reasonable people that the child has not been formed yet, and will not suffer, they will tolerate this practice even if they think it is wrong.

However, as soon as they understand that big, live, squealing babies are being murdered in abortion facilities, the spell is broken. There will be a closer look. And we know in our bones there are more Kermit Gosnells out there, don't we? It behooves all absolutists to observe the kneecapping that pro-choicers will give themselves if they continue to very stupidly get on the wrong side of this issue and actually argue for a more obvious and expansive infanticide.

The media progs who helped promote the bogus "war on women" nonsense last year must continue to be shamed for their misguided, dishonest and discredited bias and behavior.

Where have all the media lapdogs gone?