Brent Bozell has a great piece on the irony surrounding the media reaction to Planned Parenthood.
The same gaggle of broadcast TV watchdogs which has mustered endless outrage over the notion that the Catholic Church would fail to alert authorities about sexual abuse of minors is utterly uninterested in the sexual abuse of minors when someone more pleasing to secular progressives – like that abortion factory Planned Parenthood — is caught on camera.
Live Action has been exposing Planned Parenthood since 2007. You would think that by 2011, their clinic personnel would be more careful. It is just the opposite. Their disinterest toward statutory rape and child sexual abuse is shocking.
[…]
This woman has now been fired. But lying and squashing information is apparently Planned Parenthood policy. Another video broke, this time from Falls Church, Virginia, where a clinic worker told the man “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said. Abortion appointments do require photo ID. It’s nothing as far as records. It’s just photo ID that’s ever going to be required.”
[…]
The networks refused to acknowledge these stings. But it’s not a matter of journalistic principle, objecting to hidden cameras. It’s all about politics.
Twenty years ago, on the night of Halloween, 1991, ABC’s “Prime Time Live” aired a story based on its own investigation, complete with hidden cameras, of…crisis pregnancy centers. They were out to expose the allegedly awful practice of pro-lifers advising pregnant women against abortions. Within days of the ABC story, CBS and NBC also aired reports with hidden cameras and female producers lying about being pregnant.
Bozell’s response is some much-needed sense in a conversation that has sorely lacked it.
Big Time Feminist Amanda Marcotte, most notable for embarrassing herself while working for the John Edwards campaign, prizes her outdated snark (is there a more annoying term for this word?) more than the issue which she claims to care for in order to make bank: women’s causes.
Because if complicity in whoring out underage girls to satisfy money a pimp doesn’t scream GIRL POWER, I don’t know what does.
No, the worst thing is someone who makes a living off of being some feminist messiah refusing to speak out against child sex-trafficking because they would rather defend a company than kids.
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“Let’s ri-i-i-i-i-ide …”
Aren’t progressives supposed to hate corporations? How much has Planned Parenthood made off of abortion-as-birth control last year?
The figures:
The newly released Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) 2006-2007 annual report shows that the abortion behemoth has increased the number of abortions it committed from 264,943 in 2005 to 289,650 in 2006. Total revenue amounted to over one billion dollars, with the organization’s profit margin – “excess of revenue over expenses” – soaring from $55.7 million in 2005 to $112 million in 2006. Taxpayer dollars played a major role in that profit with the report acknowledging the organization received over $336 million in government grants and contracts.
Planned Parenthood has seen a steady increase in the number of abortions it does and in 2008 received over $135 million dollars in income from abortions.
And it’s OK. Because Planned Parenthood supports Democrats.
Time for multiple choice. Is Planned Parenthood angry because they were:
A) Caught on tape essentially sanctioning child-sex trafficking
B) Duped out of a new, large account they thought they’d receive with the underage girls
C) Both
Marcotte is selectively pro-choice. Pro-choice for pregnant women, but not pro-choice for the babies of those women who are enslaved by a pimp. Pro-choice for the rich but not the poor. Got it. Girl power.
Moving on.
Dave Weigel at Slate had an interesting approach to the Planned Parenthood debacle with this headline:
Downplay the issue!
Says Weigel:
(Critics of undercover conservative activists splutter when words like journalism and investigation are applied to what happens here, but let’s use these terms for simplicity’s sake.) At a few different locations, actors hired by Live Action pretended to be pimps, then waltzed into Planned Parenthood offices and asked for advice on birth control for girls younger than the age of consent.
So then Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” isn’t investigative? Agreement or disagreement with the outcome or the story isn’t the proper measure of validity when discussing journalism.
But coverage of the videos has focused more on the career of Live Action’s Lila Rose–profiles never fail to mention that she’s an aspiring actress–and less on what’s in the videos.
It seems petty to bring this up as a talking point. If Lila Rose wanted to be an impresario with a traveling circus it wouldn’t affect the behavior of the women on tape. If an interest in acting suddenly precludes political activity, please tell Sean Penn.
Media Matters and other liberal groups pounced as soon as the video went up. Media Matters welcomed the videos with a “refresher course on Andrew Breitbart’s dishonest tactics” and the screaming headline “HOAX VIDEO EXPOSED.” The hoax? Planned Parenthood had already warned the FBI about the sting. Subsequent Media Matters reports alleged that audio in the tapes had been spliced and mashed to make stuff up.
People really need to learn what video production actually entails. Watching people trip over their limited knowledge and insist that video excerpts are “edited” is the same as listening to your grandma tell people about how she’s going to “do that email.”
The only way you can accurately use “hoax” is if what was caught on tape was never caught on tape – but it was caught on tape and people have lost their jobs over it, Planned Parenthood has released a statement on it and started retraining because of the tapes thus negating such a silly defense.
The George Soros-funded Media Matters (Mr. Soros has also contributed heartily to Planned Parenthood… and NPR) spends more time propping up an indefensible entity rather than condemn what is know to be a universal screw up. Why? Because to them, argument trumps principle.
This is one of the most delicious bits of irony, when Weigel quotes Some Dude from Media Matters:
“They’re unethical,” said Ari Rabn-Havt, one of the key responders at Media Matters. “I mean, we have nothing against doing hidden camera stuff, but if you have no compunction for the truth and you can release whatever you want, you can make stories better.
Yes! The people who point out sex-trafficking are unethical, not the people who wanted to facilitate it.
Moving on.
When I went to read Talking Points Memo I smiled for a full minute at the gold ad juxtaposed next to their masthead. Dirty!
They scream (note the safe word “potential”) HOAX in their headline – but again, numerous people have been caught on tape, We’ve seen people fired, so the word hoax is purposefully inaccurate. Time for another potential conference call to potentially discuss plan B.
Does it make anyone else feel the slightest bit nauseous that there are more progressive outlets defending Planned Parenthood and condemning the people who brought this issue to light rather than thanking the Live Action for exposing this issue and perhaps, saving some girls in the process? Do you think Planned Parenthood will again work with any more pimps to help their child sex slaves?
Call me naive, but I expected progressives, those big defenders of human rights and choice, to be the loudest voice for the many children who are sex slaves in the United States. I assumed that their voices would eclipse ours here at the Bigs in condemning what occurred on these tapes. That is my mistake. I won’t expect so much humanity from my progressive brethren again.
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