UPDATE 4/16, 9:50a: The Atlantic has posted 14 possible reasons for the media blackout.
UPDATE 4/14, 5:10p: The Gospel Coalition has posted eight reasons for the media blackout, which are good.
4/11, 4:34p: Living in Chicago, I’ve observed press coverage up close on three of the most notorious mass murderers ever apprehended: Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Richard Speck.
Speck tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966. Dahmer murdered 17 boys and men in the Milwaukee/Chicago area between 1978-1991, keeping and eating some of their body parts. Gacy raped and murdered at least 33 boys and men between 1972-1978, burying many in the crawl space of his Chicago suburban home.
In each case the press tripped over themselves to recount every morbid detail, anxious to feed the public’s fascination with the macabre (click to enlarge)…
Flash forward to January 2011 when Dr. Kermit Gosnell was arrested in Philadelphia on charges he murdered seven newborns and a woman.
In Gosnell’s clinic police found severed baby feet of various sizes kept in see-through containers and bodies of babies in a freezer and in the basement. The upper spinal cords of some of the babies had been severed. These are all photos from the grand jury report. Click to enlarge…
Although Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder, witnesses have testified he murdered over 100 babies over three decades. If true, this would rank Gosnell as one of the top five known serial killers worldwide of the 20th and 21st Centuries by victim count.
But if you only tune in to broadcast t.v. news, you will have never even heard the name “Gosnell.” According to an April 4 open letter demanding coverage of the Gosnell trial from 20 conservative leaders:
Since the Gosnell trial began three weeks ago, ABC, CBS, and NBC have given the story ZERO seconds of coverage on either their morning or evening news shows. They have not covered Gosnell once since his arrest in January 2011, and even then, only CBS did so.
Print media? In a scathing column today in USA Today, Democrat pro-lifer Kirsten Powers noted:
Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified “It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.” Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: “Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic.”
The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.
And about that AP story Newsbusters’ Tom Blumer noted something peculiar:
AP has not applied the “abortion” tag to any of its 19 “Big Stories” about Kermit Gosnell.
Thus, anyone who attempts to do a tag search on the AP’s web site looking for uses of “abortion” won’t see anything about Gosnell – but they’ll see all kinds of reports about how mean social conservatives, supposedly backward states, and GOP presidential candidates are trying to curb “reproductive rights.”
If there’s an explanation for this practice other than to deliberately minimize readers’ potential exposure to the horrific practitioners, practices, and procedures in the abortion industry as it really operates, I can’t imagine what it would be.
On the House floor today Republican Scott Perry (pictured right), from Pennsylvania, where Gosnell’s murdered his victims, “blasted President Obama and the press for ignoring a Pennsylvania trial in which an abortion doctor is accused of performing late-term abortions and killing one woman,” according to The Hill.
Indeed, Obama shed a tear for the child victims of the Sandy Hook shooting but has said nothing of Gosnell’s baby victims. But we all know Obama would have supported killing the children of Sandy Hook up until, during – and after – the moment of their birth.
Which brings me to the obvious point, nothing earth shattering. The reason the media and pro-abortion politicians are ignoring Gosnell’s trial is because Gosnell was an abortionist. Seven of his victims were killed after they had been aborted, and one died after she had aborted.
Why would people who believe in legalized abortion want to shed negative light on bad things that happen during legalized abortions?
Truth be told, I don’t think these people consider abortion survivors as real people – or Gosnell a mass murderer.
Calling Gosnell a “mass murderer” for completing abortions outside the uterus brings them too close to pro-lifers who call abortionists mass murderers for completing abortions just a few inches the other way.
Yes, geography is an added problem for abortion supporters in this case. Being argued during the Gosnell trial is whether babies were legally aborted inside the uterus, or illegally murdered outside – and likely within a 30-second window of time. This sort of conversation makes the other side run.
And it leads to other uncomfortable conversations on pain and viability. What does it mean if a post-born baby “jumps” when her spinal cord is severed? Do we seriously want to argue this same baby would have not felt her arms and legs being ripped off in a different location a few minutes earlier? And are we all really okay with aborting babies who could survive outside the uterus if just given a chance?
No, the media will likely never give the Gosnell story the attention it merits. It’s way too uncomfortable.
But I think it serves a purpose to continue to hound them on it. No justice, no peace.
We believe the story is deserving of coverage by our own staff, and we intend to send a reporter for the resumption of the trial next week. In retrospect, we should have sent a reporter sooner.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.