During an interview with MRCTV, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, asked what has become one of the most common questions across the country: Why won't the mainstream media give the murder trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell the coverage it deserves?
“We're talking about people being murdered,” she declared. Is the lack of attention “because we’re talking about poor women in minority neighborhoods, or is it because the media is trying to protect the abortion business?”
In an effort to learn the truth about the matter, Blackburn “had 71 of my colleagues join me on a letter to the executives of ABC, NBC, CBS asking why they have not been covering this story.”
The only response she received was “a phone call from the president of CBS,” who avoided answering her question.
Nevertheless, “the more we hear and the more we know about” the case, “the more concerned we grow” since we're discussing “somebody who has over 250 counts against him.”
You've got murder, you've got infanticide, you have racketeering, you're talking about failure to comply with the laws that are on the books, and you have all of this other evidence that the prosecution brought forward, and people who have worked in this clinic.
“I think this will be one of the most tragic murder stories of our time,” the congresswoman stated.
She also voiced concern that the media has focused on more trivial human-interest stories, instead of this one dealing with an important matter.
We want to know why are they covering the Sno-Kone kings, why are they are covering these other stories that certainly are human interest stories -- but they are not public safety stories, they are not life-and-death issues.
When asked how her constituents in the 7th congressional district of Tennessee have reacted to the case, Blackburn said many of them are “just appalled” as they've read the news in Philadelphia newspapers.
“Many of them found out about it because of what we posted on our website, blackburn.house.gov, in Facebook at MarshaBlackburn, and Twitter @marshablackburn, and that is how they were kind of led into following the story,” she said.
In addition, many of her constituents have read Kirsten Powers' fiery April 10 op-ed in USA Today, and “they're absolutely appalled at what they're hearing, and they cannot believe that the media has just silently sat while this trial took place and have been very quiet as the jury is deliberating.”
Blackburn then addressed the possibility that this kind of monstrous behavior might be happening in other abortion clinics around the country.
“We've looked at what we're finding out in other states,” she said. “Here's a great example of, you know, of the indication that maybe Kermit Gosnell's clinic is not the outlier, which is what Planned Parenthood had tried to say.”
Over the past three years, 15 states have investigated different abortion clinics, and so have to ask: “What are the states doing? Why could they go for 15 years -- or 17 in the Gosnell case -- and not check some of these clinics?”
Blackburn said that abortion facilities “should be complying with existing laws, so you do have to say: 'Is this more the norm?'”
“And one of the things that has caused us to be very concerned about this is the revelations from some of the victims that they had reported this to Planned Parenthood, and Planned Parenthood had instructed them to report it to the Department of Health,” she stated.
However, the congresswoman admitted that she doesn't know what the Department of Health did. “There are a lot of unanswered questions there.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the “Big Three” networks were slow to cover the Gosnell trial, which led to conservatives to demand that ABC, CBS and NBC stop censoring reports on the case.
When the news programs finally covered the controversial trial, they warned of a wave of new and restrictive laws governing abortion, and when media critic Howard Kurtz discussed coverage of the case, he asserted that the conservative media “didn't do much either.”
As a result of the growing amount of coverage, Earl Shorris told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that the trial had increased the “stigma” toward abortion, and when Fox News aired a documentary on the case entitled “See No Evil,” the abortionist's attorney slammed the channel for trying to sway the jury.
At the time of this posting, the jury has not yet rendered a verdict in the case, but when the decision regarding Gosnell's guilt or innocence is announced, check back to the NewsBusters site for news on the decision and the media's reaction to it.
