Pro-life organization Live Action has launched its new website, “March on the Media,” a campaign that pledges to combat pro-abortion bias in the mainstream media.
The initiative was launched in the wake of a recent report by Media Research Center (MRC) showing that ABC, CBS, and NBC have devoted three times more coverage to Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis’s (D) filibuster of the Texas bill to ban abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy, than to the trial of convicted murderer and abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
While many mainstream journalists dismissed coverage of the Gosnell trial as a “local” issue, and others excused that dismissal as understandable given the lurid and grotesque images from Gosnell’s clinic, Davis was hailed as a “rock star” and “folk hero” in pink tennis shoes, fighting “severe” abortion restrictions and championing the cause of women’s “healthcare.”
The Texas bill, now a law, raises the standards of care of abortion clinics to those of other ambulatory surgery centers. Davis and her supporters seemed in no rush to address the unsanitary and horrific conditions found not only in Gosnell’s clinic, but others in Texas as well.
The MRC analysis demonstrated:
In the 19 days since her June 25 filibuster, ABC, CBS and NBC have devoted 40 minutes, 48 seconds of their morning and evening news programs to stories including Davis. That’s more than three times the 13 minutes 30 seconds they gave Gosnell during the entire 58 days of the murder trial.
The Live Action campaign is multifaceted and includes a petition drive and open letters to the three major mainstream networks. The initiative comes as media outlets are highlighting Davis’s trip to Washington this week for two fundraising stops. Since her June filibuster, Davis has received nearly $1 million in donations. This week, she will appear with Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Al Franken (D-MN).
Lila Rose, president of Live Action, said in a statement on Wednesday:
Like it or not, the major news networks have huge influence in our country. Millions of Americans get a sense of the world through national filters like ABC, CBS, and NBC. So it’s inexcusable when these networks, in whom so much public trust is invested, refuse to report the facts on one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time.
The pro-life group will be showcasing reports by MRC on selective and biased reporting of the abortion issue, from the Kermit Gosnell trial to Wendy Davis’s filibuster against the recently passed House Bill 2, which regulates abortion in Texas.
“The media has flinched from the reality of abortion for decades, but the degree to which they mischaracterize and whitewash this issue has become egregious lately,” Rose said.
Rose continues:
How can you go on about a senator’s sneakers and completely ignore the reason you’re talking about those shoes in the first place: because she’s championing a procedure that literally tears helpless children to pieces and puts women’s lives and health in extreme danger?
Asserting that she wants to point the media in a new direction, Rose said, “A change is long overdue for our big news distributors. It’s time for these networks to end their blackout of the truth on abortion — how it irreparably harms women, babies, and society.”
“The abortion-friendly reporters and executives in New York and Washington will not come to terms with this fact unless we bring it to their door,” Rose said. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
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