On Thursday's All Things Considered, Julie Rovner, NPR's resident ObamaCare flack, claimed that the U.S. Senate rejecting an amendment protecting religious liberty was "closer than the 63 percent majority that supports the contraceptive coverage requirement" from the federal government, according to the poll from the liberal Kaiser Family Foundation. The organization is an oft-used source for Rovner.
The group obtained the 63 percent figure by asking a question that omits the religious liberty component to the firestorm: "In general, do you support or oppose the new federal requirement that private health insurance plans cover the cost of birth control?" A Pew Research Poll from mid-February included that issue, and found that 48 percent supported an exemption for religious groups, versus 44 percent in support of the mandate.
Almost three weeks earlier, the correspondent filed an unashamedly one-sided report about the controversial mandate from the Obama administration, which forces religious institutions to include coverage of abortifacients, sterilizations, and birth control. Her sole sources during the segment were two lawyers - one who works for the left-wing ACLU, and worked in the past for a pro-abortion organization; and a lawyer from the federal government's own EEOC.
Host Robert Siegel set the tone with a slanted introduction for Rovner's report: "The Senate has defeated narrowly an effort to roll back President Obama's policy requiring most insurers to offer no-cost contraceptives. Republicans have been arguing the issue is a matter religious freedom.
But as NPR's Julie Rovner reports, they were narrowly trumped by those arguing in favor of women's health."
After playing a sound bite from Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who criticized the federal mandate, the NPR journalist regurgitated the left's talking points about the proposed Blunt Amendment: "[T]he proposal would not just apply to contraceptives, and it would not just apply to insurance companies. It would have allowed any health insurer or employer to decline to offer any benefit that is- quote, 'contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the plan's sponsor.'"
Later, Rovner gave more slanted language about the debate over the amendment, with supporting soundbites from liberal senators:
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I), VERMONT: If the United States Senate had 83 women and 17 men rather than 83 men and 17 women, my strong guess is that a bill like this would never even make it to the floor.
ROVNER: But others, like Louisiana Republican David Vitter, said the debate has been mischaracterized by the media.
SEN. DAVID VITTER, (R), LOUISIANA: This isn't merely about contraception. It's about abortion. It's about abortion-inducing drugs, like Plan B.
ROVNER: For the record, Plan B, the so-called morning-after pill, is classified by the FDA as a contraceptive. It's not the same as the abortion pill, RU-486, but one of the ways Plan B may work is by preventing the implantation of a fertilized egg into a woman's uterus. So for those who believe that life begins at fertilization of egg and sperm, that drug could be considered to cause very early abortions, and that has added to the controversy. But, still, it's a debate that Democrats, like Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, mostly welcome.
SEN. DICK DURBIN, (D), ILLINOIS: The vote today should be a clear message to those who are following that if we take extreme positions from the social agenda that we hear so often in these Republican primaries and bring them to a vote, common sense and majority feeling in America will prevail.
The Louisiana politician has a point about the media's coverage of the controversy. A February 16, 2012 study by the MRC found that the Big Three networks "downplayed the religious freedom component to the story, casting it instead as a political dogfight between liberals and conservatives....Out of the 91 talking heads who appeared as soundbites on their morning or evening programs [between January 30 and February 15, 2012]...politicians far outnumbered Church officials, by a margin of 60 to 9."
The NPR correspondent ended her report with her 63 percent figure from the left-leaning group, and added that "the poll also found, however, that half of those surveyed think the whole issue is being blown up now largely because of election year politics." Rovner has touted polls from Kaiser Family Foundation on at least three other occasions since August 2011. Her liberal-leaning network has a joint partnership with the organization, along with the Harvard School of Public Health, a detail which she didn't mention on-air during those three occasions.
