If Kermit Gosnell had used a Glock instead of scissors to finish his victims off, maybe the QC Times would have led with the murder trial daily?
After struggling for several days to come up with the words to write about this story I decided this evening that it would be best to let others prime the pump. As an activist in the right to life movement for over 40 years I have written pages and pages of material, primarily political analysis, but also advocacy articles for public venues dealing with Roe v Wade and its companion case Doe v Bolton, parental notice regulations, partial birth abortion and mercy killing among other related topics.
But as regards the Gosnell murder trial in Philadelphia, the media’s role in sustaining not only the overall abortion regime in our country but numerous similar chambers of horror by their malfeasance, I have been left gasping and grasping.
So I ask Veritaspac readers that if you are not already aware of the story, that you scan the articles associated with some of the links and pull quotes I provide in order to take that burden away from me. However to bring the story home I will comment on the two local newspapers of record and their journalistic malpractice as suggested by a key word search of their online archives.
From John Fund in Monday’s National Review Online this article serves to identify the national journalistic scandal.
If there were an award for Most Constructive Shaming of the News Media, the clear winner would be Kirsten Powers, the brave Fox News pundit and Daily Beast columnist. Last Thursday, she called out the mainstream media for failing to adequately report on the ongoing trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who is charged with murdering seven newborn infants and a patient seeking an abortion. Powers’s USA Today piece provoked an instant response from many sheepish journalists.
Megan McArdle of the Daily Beast acknowledged she “should have” written about the “horror Doc’s” clinic. The Washington Post made the stunning admission that “we should have sent a reporter sooner.” Dylan Beers, Politico’s media reporter, flatly stated that “Gosnell should be front-page, top-of-the-hour news by prime time tonight.” Jeffrey Goldberg, a Bloomberg View columnist, concluded, “It’s remarkable that it took this long.”
Indeed, the silence had been stunning since the Gosnell trial began back on March 18. No mention of the story at all on ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, or MSNBC, and no front-page stories in any major paper. National Review, The Weekly Standard, Breitbart.com, and Michelle Malkin, on the other hand, provided early and consistent coverage. J. D. Mullane, the columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times who has been a tiger on the story, reported last week what he found in the courtroom: In the entire 40-seat section reserved for the media, he was the only one present. A couple of local journos were scattered elsewhere around the courtroom.
The following pro-life news outlets have filed multiple stories daily since the trial began, and many other articles in the days leading up to the trial and in the nearly two years of legal maneuverings preceding that.
The trial continues as this is being written. This is grisly horrifying reading. I have no other words to describe the revelations. In order to locate the panoply of related articles they offer, use each sites search feature using “gosnell” as the key word. It is also acknowledged that many other pro-family and conservative sites have done yeoman service reporting on the trial and critiquing the mainstream media blackout.
A more reflective article, rather than original reporting as above, is available at American Thinker. There Richard F. Miniter writes:
A demon has been revealed in twenty-first-century Philadelphia, and the three broadcast networks have been enforcing a policy of silence about the discovery. So have most major newspapers . . .
But perhaps an even more telling reason for ignoring the Gosnell story is that among the terrible details is revealed the fact that many, many babies being aborted late-term survive the process — not just a tiny few, as pro-abortionists keep insisting…Gosnell’s charged with seven counts, but testimony indicates there may have been a hundred — maybe more, maybe a lot more. And so the liberal press, ever supportive of a woman’s right to “choose,” just can’t have that known . . .
Then, too, let us remember that in the Illinois state legislature Barack Obama consistently voted against allowing these children any protection. That governors, like Cuomo in New York, have consistently opposed any restrictions on the practice of late-term abortions. That an official of Planned Parenthood recently suggested that the right to kill children extends well beyond birth.
The Associated Press (AP) maintains that it has filed 16 stories on the prosecution of Gosnell. If true we suspect many were pencil whipped adds the same day to an existing story. But whether they were or were not, of interest to us was whether the editors of the Dispatch & Argus (D-A) and the Quad City Times (QCT) provided their readers any of the wire service stories.* The answer is yes (barely) and no, in that respective order.
Result of key word search using “Gosnell” for the D-A For the D-A on-line version, we find that their first story, going back more than three years, was Feb, 23rd 2010 and dealt with Gosnell’s license revocation. There was a gap until January 20 of 2011 when four redundant AP wire dispatches that provided information about his murder charges made their way to the D-A online edition. Note that not all if any of these stories necessary appeared in the print editions of the D-A. We did not check either paper’s print editions. However if anything did appear in the print edition it would have been in the online edition, which is more extensive.
Probably as a result of somewhat sensational revelations from pleadings and discovery there were two more stories that found their way onto at least the D-A’s online edition. Those were on April 9 and March 23 of 2011. Then on March 18th and March 25 of this year there were stories relating to testimony at trial. But the most horrific sensational stuff, the sort of thing testified to in the last two weeks to date of the trial, about grisly decapitations and absolutely unfathomable behavior, which were available to the same press outlets that reports endlessly about trivial matters, – nothing. Why?
We can only conclude that either the AP decided that the revelations were so chilling that the AP editors chose to protect the abortion legalization regime they have protected for so long, or if the AP did file stories, the D-A editors decided to deep six them. Nevertheless for having run some of the stories early on we give the D-A a “C-” based on what we have grown to expect from them, which is not much.
And the QC Times?
Well from doing the search of the D-A online archives we know that wire service stories about Gosnell were available at least three years back. Incredibly we found not one news story in the on-line archives of the QCT using the key word search criterion “gosnell” There was one opinion piece by Brent Bosell over two years ago where Gosnell’s name appeared. It referred to media bias and failure to report news challenging the mainstream media’s presumptions about the abortion issue. Bosell’s article referred to the then recent accusations about Gosnell. The QCT was probably conforming to contractual or business practices in printing that story. However as regards news about Gosnell’s indictment and trial – nothing. Why?
We surmise to protect their editorial grotesqueness regarding late term abortion from exposure, shame and ridicule and to do their part to protect the late term abortion regime they have championed along with the Obama regime they helped foist on the country, the later previously chronicled.
Do we accuse the QC Times of support for late term abortion, including partial birth abortion? Their April 28th, 2007 masthead editorial indicts them. Reading it one cannot escape the conclusion that for them the legal decision not to be pregnant (Roe V Wade and Doe V Bolton provided no meaningful restriction at any stage of pregnancy) also protects the right to a dead baby at any time the abortion decision is made.
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Any pretense on their part that late term abortion only involves non-viable unborn babies is belied by abortion survivors. Laws to insure that as much protection as possible is afforded the right to life of an unborn child presented two-thirds of the way outside of the birth canal were essentially vilified as an interference with the right to a dead baby. Language was corrupted so as to even characterize that as a decision to “prevent birth” even when a dead baby is definitively birthed by the nature of the “procedure” they defended ( a grotesquely twisted concept of birth control).
We are sure that the QCT wishes Kermit Gosnell was a little bit tidier about his business, and a little bit more discreet in his proclivities with dead bodies, you know, so as not to embarrass the cause. No wonder they have skulked away from reporting on Gosnell even though it is probably just for now, while they develop their spin. “Abortion, its all about dead babies,” ought to be their slogan. No wonder we quit our subscription April 28th of 2007.
R Mall
* The story has local relevance as well. A late term abortion regulatory measure came just a few votes short in the Iowa Senate two years ago and a local state senator Democrat Joe Seng figured prominently, giving cover to a legislative maneuver encouraged by the ardently pro-abortion Democrat majority leader Michael Gronstal that would not have prevented one late term abortion in Iowa. Instead the legislation, had it passed, could have pegged Iowa as the Midwest center for such business by virtue of the superficial regulations they tried to foist on the state. Davenport would be one of the four most likely in-state locations for a late term abortion mill.
“ . . . an official of Planned Parenthood recently suggested that the right to kill children extends well beyond birth.”
This is the most heinous statement I’ve heard, or read, in more than twenty-five years of advocating against abortion. It is even more incredible that this was stated within the parameters of what we believe to be civilization and a civil society.
It does not require a psychologist to recognize that this is the unmitigated pathology of a deeply fragmented psychopath. I defy anyone, anywhere to show me the difference between a person who would say (and do) this and a stone cold killer. We can be assured there is none.
Beyond this shocking and repulsive statement, the heart of this is the pro-abortionists’ complete lack of concern that abortions are primarily about convenience. It’s not about the unborn child, it’s about the mother’s whims and indiscretions. More, it’s about an astoundingly arrogant, self-centered “right” devised by the worst elements of a society.
The fact that a seeming majority of the mainstream press is not exercising its first amendment rights, or its duty, to inform the citizens in a free society says quite loudly that they are only concerned about a free press if it fits their biases and political agenda.
Yet how on earth can abortion be a political issue? That is absurd on its face. But nevertheless, there are those who have made it so for reasons that lack the purposes of a civilized people. Only one person representing the press was present in the courtroom of the trial of Gosnell’s murder trial. Only one! We should all feel shamed by that. And that by being present, a journalist would be admitting his or her political slant. That is obscene.
As a man, I cannot know what agony a woman must feel after having an abortion, upon the realization that she has killed her own child. The emotional burden must be overwhelming knowing that it was only an exquisitely selfish act.
If it wasn’t for Kirsten Powers, I think this horror story would still be largely ignored. It’s beyond belief what was going on for over 20 years. Yet I don’t think what Gosnell was doing is much different than other late term abortionists.
Killing the baby minutes, days or weeks before in the womb still has the same result, a baby that was killed.