The real Kermit Gosnell story? Misogyny
According to angry pro-life activists, the left media hates babies so much that it refuses to cover the case of Kermit Gosnell, a "doctor" in Pennsylvania accused of performing illegal abortions. The Grand Jury report is gruesome, with Gosnell accused of operating a horror show, killing infants and at least one woman, and maiming many others. Why is no one covering this? wondered Fox News analyst Kirsten Powers in a USA Today column. Male writers at mainstream publications followed suit, implying that the lack of coverage was part of a pro-choice left-wing cover-up.
If there was a pro-choice left-wing cover-up, it was a pretty shoddy one. After all, feminist and pro-choice writers covered Gosnell extensively when the story first broke in 2010 and in 2011 when the Grand Jury report detailing Gosnell's alleged crimes was filed. Coverage came from Katha Pollitt in the Nation, Amanda Marcotte in Slate, Kate Harding in Salon, Margaret Hartman and Erin Gloria Ryan in Jezebel, Akiba Solomon in Colorlines, Lori Adelman in NBC's the Grio, Michelle Goldberg in the Daily Beast, and dozens of other pieces in smaller publications and on blogs, including yours truly. We all condemned him in strong terms, using phrases like "horror show", "house of horrors" and "butcher", and detailed the accusations.
The mainstream media also covered the case. CNN, Time, the New York Times, NPR, CBS, the Washington Post and dozens of other outlets all featured the charges against Gosnell in early 2011. Then in April, the court issued a gag order, barring attorneys in the case from speaking to the media - a fairly common practice, especially in high-profile criminal trials. The trial commenced a few weeks ago, and, as is standard practice, local news outlets have covered the play-by-play. Once a verdict is handed down, there is little doubt that mainstream publications will again dedicate stories and segments to the case. But until then, without access to the players in the case and having already detailed the allegations and evidence, there simply isn't much to report.
Make abortion legal and accessible
Nonetheless, anti-abortion advocates are crying foul, first claiming that no one covered Gosnell at all, and now wondering why large media outlets are not detailing the day-by-day of a trial in state court. A small handful of male writers who apparently did not read their female colleagues' extensive coverage of the issue and could not be bothered to run a Google news search brought the anti-choice claims hook, line and sinker. And now the broader media narrative is: "No one covered Gosnell because pro-choicers were afraid of bad press about abortion." Never mind it was pro-choice writers who so thoroughly wrote about the case when it broke, and if male journalists who rarely read or cover reproductive health issues did not hear about it, perhaps the fault lies with their own myopia.
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/201341411431138373.html
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