Shown herein are scans of the print versions of the January 23 and January 26 Dispatch – Argus, respectively. The partial scans are merely intended to demonstrate relative story emphasis, size and positioning, regarding observances marking the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade abortion decision. Both stories were assigned, perhaps ironically, C- sections. The actually stories are best read in hard copy or the online edition.
Roe V Wade, and the companion case handed down the same day, Doe v. Bolton took any substantial independent power to regulate abortion and protect unborn human life away from every state, effectively legalizing the destruction of pre-born children at any time for the full nine-months of their residence in the womb.* Over 50 million unborn human lives have been legally destroyed as a result.
Hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans have come together every year in protest on the anniversary of the decisions legalizing the carnage. The abortion decisions remain a key socio-political issue defining political parties and candidates and electoral margins. Indeed Time magazine recently featured a cover story as to how “40 years ago, abortion-rights activists won an epic victory with Roe v. Wade . . . they’ve been losing ever since”
So as regards this epic decision, the controversy about which has never subsided . . . except perhaps in the wishful thinking, bored laziness, or historic cultural ignorance of whoever the editors are at the Argus Dispatch . . . readership is afforded petty, virtually dismissive coverage.
The January 23rd story shown, relates to events up to one day after the anniversary of the Roe and Doe decisions. Virtually every state and sizable metro area had some pro-life demonstrations on the anniversary or in the time period leading up to it, including the Quad Cities. On Saturday the 19th a Midwest March for Life was held at the Iowa Capitol lead by the Governor of Iowa. There was no mention of either event.**
The space afforded the coverage up to and including the Roe anniversary in the print pages was in the “Briefly” part of section C, placed under a story about a shooting at a Texas community college where three people were wounded. Wounded mind you, and the story was so undeveloped that there were scant specifics available to report. Controversy rages over three thousand abortions a day in the U.S. and the D-A can’t muster anymore space than it devoted to a non-fatal Texas shooting ?!
There was no dearth of information to pass on about the Roe observances even if the D-A was uninspired to do any original reporting. For the D-A print edition used only a small part of a far more extensive AP dispatch referring to the observances. Their online story has 950 words and 24 paragraphs. But the D-A editors thought the events rated only the first four verbatim paragraphs, about 190 words or 20% of just that one available feed.
As we have discussed before, assigning more extensive coverage to the online editions is not a substitute for appropriate coverage. It has the effect of burying the story. Online editions do not have near the casual impact and can be used to hide an important story while claiming journalistic evenhandedness. If the editorial decision to diminish print coverage was not intentional and rather due to some extenuating circumstance the editors could have easily explained as much and referred readers to the online edition for the more extensive coverage and ran a followup story the next day.
January 26th was the day after probably the largest single U.S. pro-life demonstration ever. Coverage did not improve. So what does the community get from the D-A? The same “Briefly” consignment and number two positioning again. And note the stories on the page. An Egyptian, Egyptian mind you, protest is referred to as “tens of thousands” and also included a cropped picture for dramatic effect. Another Middle East throng assembled in protest, now there is a superlative story. But the Washington D.C. March for Life is referred to as “thousands,” not “tens of thousands” when no credible observer would report less than at least several hundred thousand, easily verifiable because it took place in our nation’s capitol with readily available reportage. And the picture picked? A cropped shot of a banner that does not show the multitudes. Pathetic.
*The United States has the most wide open abortion policy in the western world, and arguably, next to China, de jure, worldwide. As a result of the Roe and Doe decisions there remains no due process constitutional requirement to protect unborn human life even one day prior to delivery at nine months gestation. Abortions continue in the United States even in the final weeks of pregnancy as long as the woman desires the demise of the child and the abortion is performed by a physician – abortionist. The idea that abortion was restricted to health reasons in the final trimester of pregnancy (intrauterine development of the child), as many pretend about the decision including major news sources, in reality was virtually meaningless because the terms relating to health reasons set forth by the court in Doe v Bolton were so vague as to include mental and familial distress, concepts far removed from any extremely rare life threatening condition or serious threat to the woman’s health.
Today in most states, as a result of the abortion decisions, there is no meaningful statutory restrictions on abortion and the intentional killing of the unborn child, even up to the moment of otherwise normal birth, as long as the woman accedes, the doctor-abortionist is willing to do so and offs the child before extracting her from the womb, and both couch their desire in vague health terms. For further reading see the Roe and Doe category of links at right.
** For the record we did examine the A-D print pages from January 18 to January 26th and found nothing related to pro-life protests not set forth here. If we missed something please let us know for inclusion in this analysis. We have not examined the QC Times print coverage of the same period however a trusted observer indicated it was also scant, particularly relative to other “newsworthy” coverage. R Mall
pps — This link will take you to an article on the Media Research Center website exposing how ABC and CBS spiked stories on the Washington D.C. March for Life. NBC was almost as bad providing 15 seconds of commentary on NBC Nightly News
