QCT coverage of Gosnell murder trial
The time frame chosen in the headline for this post harkens back to January 20, 2010, the day the Associated Press (AP) reported the grand jury indictment of abortionist Kermit Gosnell for the deaths of seven babies and one patient.* The state of Pennsylvania charges that the babies were viable, illegal under Pennsylvania law, born alive in spite of abortion procedures at Gosnell’s abortion chamber, and as such deserved the protections of humanity and the law but died as a direct result of Gosnell’s criminal actions. Gosnell plunged scissors into the back of the babies heads and snipped their spinal chords.
Relevant background to our article is that the QC Times defends late term abortions as a decision between a woman and her doctor, no independent rights of the pre-born child need be considered, de jure, or otherwise second guessed.
Now the patient that died — we will for the moment disregard the babies and refer to the only one theoretically the QCT editorial board can relate to — was a woman of color. Indeed as a matter of testimony, besides Gosnell himself, his patients victims are almost exclusively women of color as are of course their aborted children.
Far be it from us to accuse the QCT of ignoring some murder stories based on race (we know they ignore stories that expose abortion and abortionists for what they are). But then even one of the QCT’s own favorite columnists, Leonard Pitts, wrote an article that might make objective editorial board members a little circumspect. And not that we give a lot of credence to Leonard Pitts but then the QCT thinks he is a compelling voice of reason, so here is good ol’ Leonard’s take back in December of 2011, printed in the QCT.**
This story unfolds in the wake of similar media fixations on Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, JonBenet Ramsey, Jennifer “Runaway Bride” Wilbanks, Chandra Levy, Lori Hacking, Robyn Gardner, Natalee Holloway, all of them young, female, white, pretty — and imperiled. There is, should it need saying, a naked bias in the media’s obsession with white women in danger to the exclusion of pretty much every other cohort of the American demographic.
Pitty us to think any of that applies to the QCT but we did search their online archives and we found many stories related to the deaths Leonard mentions and their accused murderers prior to any convictions. But you know, still nothing on Kermit Gosnell. Just say’n.
Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal has an erudite take on the matter. Liberals have widely adopted the view, used as an epithet by them, that conservatives cling to their guns and bibles. Henningers thesis – liberals cling to gun control and abortion. The article is both insightful and ends with a warning for the good of the country.
Everyone clings to something. But when it comes to criticizing unseemly political dependencies, it’s almost always liberals accusing . . .
But what do liberals cling to? Recent events have revealed two things. Gun control and abortion.
The gun-control cling we know about because rarely a day passes without a news story about the Senate’s gun-control legislation. Then there’s the Kermit Gosnell abortion trial, which until recently few people knew about because there was little media coverage of it. The rise of the Web notwithstanding, it’s still true that unless the mainstream press covers a story, it pretty much doesn’t exist . . .
Political correctness—the silent code that decides whose side of the story gets elevated and whose side gets buried—has been a blunt but effective weapon, which the dominant liberal culture has used to achieve a lot of victories over “them” the past 40 years. But the wins have come at a price. That price is the return of an unmistakable, growing and potentially destabilizing bitterness in American politics.
A fairer-minded media would be the best way to level the playing field. Absent that, our politics will be leveled by other means. What the major media think then, if they’re still around, won’t matter.
We find that his analysis applies to the QC Times in spades. The QC Times has had innumerable gun control articles and of course today in the online version has a lengthy AP analysis of what is in store for the gun control issue now that the Senate, with Democrats in the majority, could not come up with enough votes to further erode the Second Amendment. Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth from liberals.
But of course still no acknowledgment from the QC Times that women die at the hands of abortionists, and that in spite of abortion being legal and lucrative it is the dregs of the medical profession attracted to it. And babies, inordinately black babies, no matter. R Mall
* Here we are being charitable to the QCT. Their blackout is arguably considerably longer as regards just the Gosnell matter. There were AP stories over the wires leading up to the indictment.
** Printing Pitts column even when it indicts ones own proclivities is not atonement, it is either a contractual obligation or a business practice. Nor can the QCT claim sensational murders and trial coverage is limited to local cases, none of the stories listed by Pitts involve local events, but the QCT did print stories.
