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.

Stem Shell Game

I can't decide whether this reporting is purposefully negligent or simply sloppy. Inquirer.net is carrying a story about a Japanese team that used "stem cells" to partially treat a spinal cord injury in a monkey.

TOKYO - Japanese researchers said Wednesday they had used stem cells [which kind? some are moral to use, others not] to restore partial mobility in a small monkey that had been paralysed from the neck down by a spinal injury.

"It is the world's first case in which a small-size primate recovered from a spinal injury using stem cells," professor Hideyuki Okano of Tokyo's Keio University told AFP. [Another reference to generic "stem cells". Designed to confuse?]

Okano's research team, which earlier helped a mouse recover its mobility in a similar treatment, injected so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into a paralysed marmoset, he said. [So-called? That's what they're called: iPS. Differences matter.]

The team planted four types of genes into human skin cells to create the iPS cells, according to Kyodo News. [Injecting genes into skin cells is licit (iPS), putting baby in the blender (embryonic stem cells (ESC)) is not.]

The injection was given on the ninth day after the injury, considered the most effective timing, and the monkey started to move its limbs again within two to three weeks, Okano said.

"After six weeks, the animal had recovered to the level where it was jumping around," he told AFP. "It was very close to the normal level." [Apparently not a cure-all.]

"Its gripping strength on the forefeet also recovered to up to 80 percent."

Okano called the research project a major stride to pave the way for a similar medical technique to be used on humans. [Always they want to experiment on humans.]

Scientists say the use of human embryonic stem cells as a treatment for cancer and other diseases holds great promise, but the process has drawn fire from religious conservatives and others who oppose it. [Irrelevant reference to ESC, when Okano's research used iPS. Uncalled-for attack on "religious conservatives and others" who are opposing the "great promise" of the ends-justifies-the-means.]

Embryonic stem cell research is controversial because human embryos are destroyed in order to obtain the cells capable of developing into almost every tissue of the body. [Right. ESC are capable of developing into the whole tissue of the body, because they come from babies!]

Oy! For a more complete treatment about the different kinds of stem cells and their permitted moral use in medicine see Father Tad Pacholczyk, Director of Education at the NCBC (National Catholic Bioethics Center), is the author of a column called Making Sense out of Bioethics that appears in various diocesan newspapers across the country.

Time Warp

Everyone is always trying to "get ahead". In this case, stories are published before they happen.


These are the kind of things you see when you stay up late on the "Inter-tubes". Although it is most hilarious to see on real-time election sites where they have declared a winner with 0% of the vote reporting.

Two Approaches To Abortion With RU-486

You knew it was coming. You hoped it wasn't, but in a society as debauched as ours, it is hardly surprising.

[ABCNews] Angie Jackson says nothing is off-limits on Twitter, not even the details of her abortion [to] chronicle her experience taking RU-486, commonly known as the abortion pill, in an attempt to "demystify" abortion for other women.

Already the mother of a 4-year-old son with special needs, Jackson, who lives in Tampa, Fla., with her boyfriend, said that after a difficult and life-threatening first pregnancy her doctors advised her to not get pregnant again.

"I had made a decision when my son was born to try to not get pregnant again, and if that failed I'd planned that I would get an abortion if I needed one," Jackson said.



"It's not that bad. It's not killing a child." she says in her YouTube post.

I'm not sure what is mystifying about the abortion drug, unless it's the idea that it's either safe, painless, or doesn't kill a child. One has to be willfully ignorant to gloss over the basic science and purpose of RU-486.

Jackson adds, "I'm not trying to ignite a culture war, I'm just offering one person's personal experience and true story."

Here is where the story starts to unravel. Jackson's Twitter handle is "AntiTheistAngie" -- not atheist, anti-theist. She signs off her posts, "Hope everyone has a Godless day". People who are "not trying to ignite a culture war" don't throw grenades. I don't believe in little green men, but I don't spend much time and energy trying to debunk those who do.

It would be easy to be simply incensed, but I am actually moved to pity. How does a person get that far removed from reality; the conscience that dulled? According to the article, Jackson is a self-professed atheist who says she grew up in a fundamentalist cult and survived sexual abuse. Any one of those things would have long lasting and damaging effects; she has the trifecta. Jackson's stated goal is to "demystify" (and even encourage) abortion in other women, which is the real tragedy.

As long as we are "demystifying", here is a gripping counterpoint from Catholic blogger and one of our favorites, the Mom, at Shoved To Them. Her experience shows the grim reality of the abortion drug RU-486, but also the grace and healing that comes from knowing God and acknowledging the humanity of each and every person. This is both heart-wrenching and grace-filled at the same time.

I wanted to write about my own experience taking Mifeprex, the abortion drug known as RU-486. Our baby had died at some point during the previous week.

[...] Really, I just wanted them to give me the drugs and let me go home. I didn't want to spend 24 hours on the maternity ward listening to the cries of other people's healthy babies and wait for my own heartbreak to begin. I have been in labor a few times and thought it was reasonable to think that I would know when to come to the hospital. I was told I could bleed to death. I stayed.

Labor began for me about 3 hours after I took the first dosage. It was administered both orally and vaginally. Within the first hour, I understood why I couldn't have gone home. I began to pass blood clots. They came in steady succession as if on a string. They ranged in size from the size of a chicken's egg to as large as my fist. Every time I moved another clot would become loose and come out. I thought I was hemorrhaging; I thought I was going to bleed to death. It was horrific. I forgot why I was there for a while and just sat on the bed crying and shaking in fear that my 4 living children would grow up without me. I have no idea how much blood came out of my body. I stopped counting clots at 20. After 20, it just didn't seem to matter any more. I asked the nurse if my experience was normal and she assured me that this was what an RU-486 abortion looked like and that I was fine.

Our daughter's body was delivered four and a half hours after the first contraction. She was the size of my hand. She was smooth and shiny and pink with perfect fingers and toes. Heartbreakingly small and achingly perfect. Our midwife wiped her clean and laid her on a blanket before handing her to me. I have never seen such agony as I saw on my husband's face when he heard her whisper, "It's a girl." His face looked like it folded in on itself. Our baby was really and truly dead. Somehow it didn't seem real until we held her in our hands and looked at her through our tears.

It wasn't over yet. I still had to deliver the placenta. It took another two hours for it to let go and come out of me. The doctor who was supervising kept coming by to check and ask "Is it out yet?" in a strangely cold voice. I later learned from my midwife that she performed abortions herself and was deeply disturbed by our pain. She told our midwife to get us out of the hospital as quickly as possible because we were upsetting the staff, and that she didn't understand why we were crying over something which was little more than a tumor in medical terms.

I can not imagine being 14, at home, trying to hide this from my mother, and having this experience. My brain can't even get to that place of fear. A child, scared and alone, passing blood clot after blood clot, thinking you're bleeding to death, but afraid to tell in case you aren't. And then, delivering that impossibly small body. Perfect, lifeless, and undeniably human. What does a little girl do when her body hurts that much, and her mind fears that much, and her baby lies dead in her hand? How is this okay?

I am not sure what the answers are, but I do know that women deserve better than to be treated this way. Our bodies and our minds deserve better protection. People can chant and scream about the rights of women, but I know that women and girls have a right to something better than this. They have a right to something better than abortion.

Like she said: Women Deserve Better.

The NFL And Abortion

Next Sunday we'll hear a lot about two things: the winner of the Superbowl and the Superbowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow, star quarterback of the Florida Gators and Heisman Trophy-winner.

The 30 second ad will be the heartwarming story of how Pam Tebow ignored doctor's advice to abort her baby when she contracted amoebic dysentery and delivered a healthy son who has grown up to be a star on and off the field. The ad, which hasn't been released, is being billed as more pro-life in the best sense of the word as opposed to anti-abortion.

Whether the ad ever sees the light of day is irrelevant at this point. The message has gone out far and wide thanks to the radical feminazis' paroxysms of outrage over at NOW and NARAL. The nation is talking, having that dialog that anti-science abortion groups have tried to prevent. The increased use of ultrasound technology makes clear that the subject of an abortion is a human baby and not an inert clump of cell with "heart tones".

Despite active attempts to hide the truth and a relentless barrage of "pro-choice" messages by almost every mainstream media outlet, a majority of the people in the country today consider themselves "pro-life", according to Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey. And increasing numbers of those people are the young, who will determine the future of the country. This is hardly surprising, since abortion advocates can't be expected to reproduce in appreciable numbers; they literally kill off their point of view.

Tim Tebow is not the first football star to come out in support of the pro-life cause. Giants co-owner Wellington Mara made a short video in 1989, "Champions For Life," in which members of the 1987 Superbowl Champion New York Giants spoke out against abortion.



That was twenty-two years ago. Now the next generation's turn to step up and speak out has come. That is exactly what twenty-two year old Tim Tebow is doing.

You can thank his mom.

Media Malpractice At March For Life

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

The Gargoyle Code

Fr. Longenecker is at it again with a new book called The Gargoyle Code which is written in the tradition of The Screwtape Letters.

Fr. L. discusses his new book in a podcast here. Check out Fr. L. as he reads a letter from the book! Very cool! Fr. L. says this book is just right for Lent (thinking ahead).

Here's a podcast in which I speak about Screwtape Letters and my new book Gargoyle Code. Tell your friends to tune in please. If you have a blog, I'd love you to link to the podcast.

Just go here.

The book is available through St Benedict Press, and will soon be available for purchase through my website. If you would like a signed copy just send me an email: dlongenecker@charter.net and let me know how many copies you would like, and the address to which it should be sent. Then go to the 'Donate' button in the right sidebar of the blog and donate the amount we agree. (one book is $15.00 which includes p+p, but more than one costs less)

Pope2You

The Vatican is trying to get the hang of this Internet-thingy at http://www.pope2you.net/, a nexus of the Vatican You Tube Channel, Facebook, iPhone App, and WikiCath.

Eh, guys, it's just not there yet ...

Red Bull Reporters On Crack

More stupidity from the science-as-reporting crowd: Red Bull has cocaine!

BERLIN (AP) — Six German states have told retailers to stop selling Red Bull Cola energy drinks after a test found a trace amount of cocaine.

This despite the immediate statement from Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment declaring it OK.

Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment said Monday that the cocaine level was too low to pose a health risk. It planned to produce a more detailed report Wednesday.

This kind of reporting / overreaction is mild when compared to the median. Aptly illustrated by Jorge Cham over at PhDComics.com.

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"?

Myths of Brazilian Abortion Case

I have specifically avoided any mention of the Brazilian abortion case involving a 9 year old and her incestuous father, partly because it's too horrible to even talk about and partly because the American media in particular has misrepresented the facts of the case with regularity, making the Catholic Church out to be a punitive, uncaring bureaucracy.

However, after reading Joshua Treviño's article over at First Things, I am astonished at his depth of knowledge, clarity, and charity regarding the matter; Treviño is an Orthodox Christian writing from Sacramento, California. Treviño draws from Canon Law, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pope Pius XII’s 1951 Allocution to Large Families, Scripture, and good old-fashioned journalistic integrity to make his case. I can do no better than to refer you to his article.

I recommend reading it in full.

This reporting generally advances three related ideas: that the Church imposed excommunications in retaliation for the abortions, that the Church imposes a lesser sanction upon a pedophiliac rapist than upon a well-meaning abortionist, and that the Church believes the little girl’s life is worth less than those of her unborn children. All three are false.

[...]

What, then, explains the failures of English-language, and specifically American, journalism in this awful affair? Partly it is a professional laziness, or more charitably, an inexactitude encouraged by understaffed newsrooms and deadline-driven reporting. Partly it is the foreignness of it all, with everyone directly involved speaking Brazilian Portuguese, and a consequent reliance upon translations and paraphrases transmitted from bureau to bureau.

Unfortunately, the foreignness doesn’t end there but also includes the stark unfamiliarity of faith and its demands. And so what we get is paraphrase that swiftly becomes inaccuracy, and inaccuracy that evolves into a series of fantastical lies: A self-imposed penalty becomes a mean-spirited rebuke; an Archbishop pleading for the life of the unborn becomes a malicious clerical martinet; and a depraved rapist of children becomes a Catholic in good standing. At the end of it all, the only truths in the media reports are those of two unborn children dead, one nine-year-old child horrendously violated, and the morass of anger and incomprehension resulting thereof.

[read more]