The uniformity of thought among journalists has meant that pro-life politicians have to be very careful how they talk about the sensitive subject. The media may forget to cover serial killing abortionist Kermit Gosnell until forced to by public pressure, but they have no problem writing 243,000 stories about a senate candidate saying something wrong about pregnancy.
Even this story, in which Trump betrayed the pro-life movement, the media treated it as something that only pro-choicers might have a problem with. Bloomberg wrote of it, “The comment, which immediately riled abortion-rights supporters…” Riled, perhaps, but they couldn’t have dreamed of a better comment to position themselves against. The Daily Mail seemed to think Trump’s comment was intended to appeal to pro-lifers! Do they know any pro-lifers?
In any case, think back to when Planned Parenthood ran a media campaign against Sen. Rand Paul. They wanted him portrayed as extreme on abortion. Phillip Elliott, now with Time but then with the Associated Press, has legendary problems covering abortion. My favorite is the correction he had to run for somehow turning pro-choice Satanists into a pro-life problem. Anyway, Elliott ran a story with the headline “Paul won’t spell out abortion ban exceptions.” Other Planned Parenthood minions peppered Rand with questions about his pro-life stance. So after a few days of this, Paul pointed out the rather obvious problem with media coverage of political views on abortion: only pro-life candidates are asked tough questions about it. You can watch Paul’s answer to a reporter’s request that he respond to the Democratic National Committee’s take on his abortion views here, as uploaded by Dave Weigel.
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