How The Media Covered The March For Life

Update 2: Washington Post’s own ombudsman criticizes paper’s March for Life coverage:

January 30, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – After receiving letters from “antiabortion readers” complaining about his paper’s coverage of the March for Life, the Washington Post’s ombudsman has penned a column agreeing with many of their criticisms.

Ombudsman Patrick Pexton says that the Washington Post gave an “incomplete picture” of the March for Life in both its print story and online photo gallery.

Pexton writes that the Post “fell down” in its coverage of the March by failing to include any photos in the gallery that conveyed the magnitude or the “festiveness” of the pro-life crowd, instead focusing on the confrontations between a small group of pro-abortion counter protesters and passing pro-lifers on the steps of the Supreme Court.

Update: This story got picked up by Steven Greydanus at the National Catholic Register and others. The collective pressure got CBS Washington to update their photo spread to include pictures of pro-lifers. Thanks Steven!

Although criticism of CBS’s original photo gallery ranged far and wide, the earliest whistleblower I’m aware of was the blog Wynken, Blynken and Nod, which commented early Tuesday. I reported on W. B. Nod’s comments later that day, and my own comments (and Nod’s) were picked up by Matthew Balan of NewsBusters. Later that evening, Al Kresta posted on the story.

Yesterday, the story spread as Jill Stanek and LifeSiteNews picked up on it. Earlier today, the issue hit The Washington Times, the Washington Examiner and Get Religion.

 * * * * *

How the media covered the 2012 March For Life: You already know the answer, don't you? The liberal media ignored or insulted the event and the conservative media had a love-fest. Right? Right?

Not so fast.

Guess: which major news network wrote this?

Thousands will gather in the District for the annual March for Life.

It’s been deemed the largest and longest-running peaceful human rights demonstration for the unborn, with more than 100,000 expected to attend.

Among those expected to participate in the march are hundreds of Catholic University students. University president John Garvey says “The passage of time since the adoption of Roe v. Wade has not dulled people’s sensitivity to this moral calamity. On the contrary, especially among young people, it has emerged as the preeminent human rights issue of our time.”

If you said Fox News, you'd be dead wrong. It was MSNBC -- possibly the most liberal news outlet of the big four. Not what you'd expect from the "foaming-at-the-mouth lickspittle toadies of the Democratic party" as some would characterize them.

In fact, MSNBC had the most favorable article. "[L]argest and longest-running peaceful human rights demonstration": read that again.

By contrast, the "right-wing, knuckle-dragging mouth breathers" at Fox News' headline read "Anti-abortion Protesters March in Washington on Roe v. Wade Anniversary" and simply regurgitated the Associated Press' 6 desultory sentences for their article, as did ABC. They also put "March for Life" in quotes, whereas MSNBC did not.

Fox News did have a short video showing the March for Life crowd, however.

The worst of the lot had to be CBS. You couldn't find their article in any of their online sections without serious digging. I had to resort to their search engine to find any results and those were in the "Local" section. Two articles were about MFL traffic, two about Speaker of the House John Boehner's address, and one about the March in Connecticut.

The remaining link was to a photo gallery entitled "Activists Hold Annual March For Life on Roe v. Wade Anniversary".  The thing I find despicable is that the caption reads in part: "Activists on both sides of the abortion issue are rallying on the 39th anniversary of the landmark Roe vs Wade case", but ALL of the pictures are of pro-abortion sign holders (probably about 20 of them).

NONE of the pictures were of the 200,000 or more pro-life demonstrators. Hundreds of thousands vs. tens and not a single shot of the March For Life itself -- not exactly unbiased reporting.

BEFORE you spam me for being a myopic, biased, hypocritical luddite -- these results were current as of mid-afternoon on Monday. More articles may have appeared since then. My research wasn't exactly scientific, but it is fairly representative of the "average person" standard that is so esteemed in court cases.

The very best, in-depth, and positive coverage of the 2012 March for Life was provided by -- no surprise -- EWTN: live and in living color on the main page. 'Cause that's how we roll.

Gray Lady Misleads On Vatican Abuse Link

I hate to accuse the Gray Lady of bias, but it appears the New York Times is engaging in blatant Catholic bashing. Again. (It's like they have an agenda or something ... weird, I know.)

Probably the most charitable thing one could say about them is that they are guilty of sensationalism. What else can you call it when the lead is deliberately mis-leading? The actual facts are thrown in about three-quarters of the way through a two-page article, but it is structured in such a way as to make you draw false conclusions and sprinkled liberally (no pun intended) about with anti-Catholic bias.

[WP] Charnley^[4] states that "an effective lead is a 'brief, sharp statement of the story's essential facts.'"^[5] The lead is usually the first sentence, or in some cases the first two sentences, and is ideally 20-25 words in length.

Media critics often note that the lead can be the most polarizing subject in the article. Often critics accuse the article of bias based on an editor's choice of headline and/or lead.

Unfortunately, I read the article all the way through, so it wasn't just the lead that was polarizing or biased.

Let's consider the New York Time's lead:

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

This lead is just barely half-true. Father Lawrence Murphy did molest as many as 200 deaf boys by his own admission. The Vatican did not defrock him (he died in 1998 some months after the close of their investigation). Only one (not three) American bishop, Archbishop Weakland, warned that the matter could be embarrassing, but he only informed the Vatican 19 years after attaining the episcopate and 40 years after the first allegation - and then only because of an impending lawsuit. Abp. Weakland was later embroiled in his own scandal involving his homosexual lover and shielding pedophile priests.

Here is a rebuttal from a pro-Catholic source.

[CC] The allegations of abuse by Father Lawrence Murphy began in 1955 and continued in 1974, according to the Times account. The Vatican was first notified in 1996: 40 years after Church officials in Wisconsin were first made aware of the problem. Local Church leaders could have taken action in the 1950s. They didn't.

Milwaukee's Archbishop Cousins could have suspended Father Murphy from priestly ministry in 1974, when he was evidently convinced that the priest was guilty of gross misconduct. He didn't.

And as if that weren't enough, later Archbishop Weakland made sure that there was no "paper trail."

The New York Times article creates the false impression that all of these events happened contemporaneously and with the knowledge and tacit approval of the Vatican instead of over 40 years and the American bishops to blame for the lack of action.

So there was definitely badness that happened and with lots of blame to go around. The Vatican was too slow in dealing with it in 1996-1998, although the canonical statute of limitations had already expired. Abps. Weakland, Cousins, and his predecessor were free to go to the police and civil authorities at any time during those 40 years. They didn't.

But as the Times eventually reported:

Father Murphy ... also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims.

So the real cover-up happened in Milwaukee , not Rome, by Church and civil authorities, and the New York Times has muddied the waters by its selective reporting.

Media Malpractice At March For Life

h/t luminousmiseries
Yes, it's about blatant news bias.

News Skew As Usual On March For Life

It should hardly come as a surprise that the major news outlets have largely ignored - again - one of the largest (and recurrent) protests in Washington D.C.

A quick look at indexed news articles does not show any major news organization hits for the March For Life until near the bottom of the first page of hits (NBC Washington), and then only to note that traffic will be difficult as a result of tens of thousands of marchers. (Estimates from the actual event put it near 300,000.)

Surprised? Didn't think so.

The Washington Post had a link in the Local / Metro section that redirected to the Religion section. It definitely wasn't "above the fold". The article wasn't particularly biased when it correctly reported that

Few counter-demonstrators were visible along the route, but some gathered in front of the Supreme Court.

but the accompanying video was heavily skewed to give the impression of a lot more counter-demonstrators and show a "balanced" report. (Example: the still for the video shows a "Keep Abortion Legal" sign holder.) In keeping with the Post's political leanings, the article titles used the "anti-abortion" appellation vs. the "pro-life" language.

Then there are the active truth twisters like Newsweek who assert that there are no young women attending the March for Life. No, I'm not linking to them.

They can skew all they like or try to create news blackouts by not covering it, but still - somehow - hundreds of thousands of people show up every year to protest abortion.

Media Bias Against Catholics Even When Not Part Of The Story

So the irritant of the day involves the last acceptable prejudice: anti-Catholicism. This is a minor case, but it shows the mindset of people who have it in for the clerics and people of faith.

A Kentucky church ordains a sex offender as a minister. The church is a Pentecostal one, not Catholic. Everybody there knows what this guy did and that he served a 5 year prison sentence for pedophilia -- and they're ok with that. (Not me, but they are and it's their church.)

So a former leader at the church is protesting this guy along with SNAP. The article, by Dylan Lovan, gratuitously inserts a quote slamming the Catholic Church (who is not involved here).

"He's still a threat" to children, said Cal Pfeiffer, who was abused by a Catholic priest as a young student in Louisville in the late 1950s and early 60s.

Really now, was it necessary to drag the Catholics into it in order to write an article on a tiny church who willingly ordained a pedophile as a Pentecostal minister (and hasn't been accused of doing anything since?) Sure, it displays either a courageous act of forgiveness and redemption or else a stupendous lack of good judgement. (I'm for the latter.)

But it ain't a Catholic story and keep us out of it.

Now if the guy were Roman Polanski, the media might be easier on him.

Christopher West Corrects Nightline Editors

Recently Christopher West, a Catholic educator, author, lecturer, and faculty member of the Theology of the Body Institute was featured on Nightline. And the criticisms have come raining in from all quarters, somewhat unjustly. But this is a case of editorial skew. Based on the meida report, I thought "this guy is a raving sex lunatic giving Catholics a bad name". Doing my own homework, I find the opposite to be the case.

Several editorial comments which have also been picked up by other news outlets have led to misleading statements which seem to paint West as a radical Catholic sex therapist / preacher who equates Pope John Paul II and Hugh Hefner's approach to sexuality.

[ChristopherWest.com] Regarding the connection between John Paul II and Hugh Hefner, Christopher often points out the interesting historical “coincidence” of the work of these two profoundly influential men. In the early 1950s, as Hefner was founding Playboy magazine, Karol Wojtyla began to lecture and write about the need for Christians to experience a redemption of their bodies and sexuality. In their respective work, both Hefner and John Paul II responded to a puritanical /Manichean approach to sexuality, but they offered completely different solutions to the problem. This is the historical "connection" of which Christopher spoke in the Nightline interview. ABC latched onto this point, but they failed to provide the larger context Christopher offered in his extended interview with Nightline’s correspondent. This lack of proper context has led some to misinterpret Christopher’s remarks as somehow endorsing Hefner’s views.

The point Christopher made—but which wasn’t included in the Nightline piece—was that, as Catholics, we agree with Hugh Hefner’s diagnosis of the disease (i.e., a puritanical rejection of the body and sexuality is utterly contrary to Catholic faith), but we radically disagree with his cure.

This kind of misunderstanding is almost inevitable given the culture's 5 second attention span and the media's desire for shocking headlines and scandalous stories. The plain fact of the matter is that context is everything. If you take a complex subject and thousand pages of instruction and try to distill it down to a sound bite, you're bound to come away with a distorted view.

WBN has covered the topic of media selective hearing before, and it seems like it applies now.

West: The Song of Songs presents an unabashed biblical celebration of the chaste love of a husband and wife, including multiple references to the intimacies of "tasting" the goodness of the other. Let my lover come to his garden and eat its choice fruits. Songs Ch 4

Media: Did he just say "oral sex"?