A physician murders babies. His unlicensed assistant is horrified to find a newborn discarded on an office shelf, crying, among more aborted babies, jars filled with legs, arms and unidentifiable fetus body parts.
While local media in Philadelphia and Delaware have covered this true story, ABC, CBS and NBC news have decided other stories are more important, such as a teen murdered by her lover, Joel Osteen’s “victimization” by an internet hoax, a Texas stabbing spree and every liberal’s favorite topic, “gun control.”
The major media still report killings, just not something as mundane as a physician trusted to care for women in dire need of his care murdering their born and unborn children.
Might that be the answer? Kermit Gosnell is on trial for murder as an abortionist who allegedly performed a multitude of late-term abortions as well as murdering newborns and a pregnant woman.
Conservatives naturally presume liberal bias is the reason such an obviously news story is ignored by the major media.
I asked historian Lee Edwards about this and he said there is no left-wing cabal that purposefully ignores news events reflecting negatively on the abortion industry. He believes it is simply “group-think,” wherein people who have the same opinions and/or ideology just don’t question each other over something with which they agree and so fail to recognize the newsworthiness of such an event.
Sean O’Sullivan reports in the News Journal: “A Delaware woman who worked for Kermit Gosnell testified Tuesday that she was called back to a room in his abortion clinic in Philadelphia to hear one screaming amid the bodies of aborted babies kept on a shelf.”
Might such a story cause Americans to cringe over abortions in general? Considering the well-publicized battles between Republicans and Democrats over Planned Parenthood funding, might such a story result in fewer Americans willing to support such funding?
Is that a concern among major media news directors and producers?
Should network news directors care about that or should they simply report the news?
“(Sherry) West also testified that she saw many women getting abortions at the clinic who looked like they were ‘too far gone’ in their pregnancies to have abortions.”
Maybe the news directors and producers at ABC, CBS and NBC simply haven’t read these stories from the Associated Press. Pretending that’s true, surely they’ve had to take some time to read and summarily discard petitions from 21 organizations such as the Hispanic Leadership Fund, Priests for Life, Concerned Women for America and the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute requesting they report this news.
Journalists don’t need to sacrifice their beliefs to report the news. The news is what the news is. The job is to report the news; perhaps report the news in a compelling manner that attracts and maintains an audience. U.S. networks have already determined murder is newsworthy. Marketers have determined adult audiences are drawn toward images of puppies, kittens and babies.
Certainly the story of a physician murdering babies is compelling.
So, why “censor” the Dr. Gosnell baby murder trial, as the respected Media Research Center (MRC) phrases this journalistic scandal?
Dan Gainor at the MRC puts a finer point on it. “The Rutgers basketball story continues to transfix the media. Coach Mike Rice was fired last week for shoving, kicking and yelling homophobic slurs at his players. Had he been accused of killing a woman and born-alive babies ‘by plunging scissors into their spinal cords’ he would enjoy the same anonymity as Kermit Gosnell... providing the killings were carried out in an abortion clinic.”
There may be an argument against the accusation of media bias, but the evidence supports the accusation.
As of April 9, 2013, the networks have collectively dedicated 41 minutes of broadcast time to the Rutgers basketball scandal.
The Dr. Gosnell murder trial?
Zero.
Rick Jensen is Delaware’s Award-Winning Conservative Talk Show Host on 1150AM WDEL and 93.7FM HD3, Streaming live on WDEL.Com from 1pm – 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter@JensenVoiceover.