The creator of the videos that revealed Planned Parenthood officials allegedly selling aborted baby parts for profit said Friday that the citizen journalists of the pro-life movement are beating out legacy media outlets in exposing the truth about abortion.
“The old, dinosaur establishment media is no longer the arbiters of truth for the masses of people in our country. They’re no longer the keepers of information. Citizen journalism organizations, whether they be large or small, are a new, vibrant, core part of our democracy,” David Daleiden, who leads the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress (CMP), told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview at the March for Life Friday.
Daleiden told a group of pro-life activists hours earlier at Family Research Council’s “Pro-LifeCon Digital Action Summit” that though Planned Parenthood is “playing every last card” to push their narrative forward, the work of citizen journalists in the pro-life movement is reaching more eyeballs than those in “traditional media.”
The summit, now in its thirteenth year, discussed the pro-life movement’s successes in communicating its message online through various social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Lawmakers, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA), for example, also attended the summit to discuss legislative accomplishments resulting from the pro-life movement’s increased online presence.
“I challenge you to find people who aren’t part of the pro-life movement and tell the stories of life,” McMorris-Rodgers told summit attendees.
At the summit, Daleiden played one of CMP’s videos and explained how the organization includes phrases such as “share this video” and “the conversation will continue” in its videos to make its exposés about Planned Parenthood more shareable on social media.
He added that his organization’s strategies have made its video exposés very popular on YouTube.
“Our undercover videos have over 13 million views on YouTube alone, have been viewed many millions of more times than more traditional media,” Daleiden said.
Planned Parenthood has targeted the video journalist for more than a year after he released undercover videos in 2015 of the organization’s alleged practice of selling the remains of babies aborted in its clinics.
Because his videos gained so much traction over the web, they became the subject of congressional investigations in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.
The Senate Judiciary Committee referred Planned Parenthood to the Justice Department and the FBI for further investigation and possible criminal prosecution.
“I think it is so significant that the Department of Justice is finally doing their job and has an open, active, criminal investigation of Planned Parenthood for their criminal sale of aborted baby body parts,” Daleiden told Breitbart News on Friday.