Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Morning After

Thousands of pro-life advocates take part in a
Thousands of pro-life advocates take part in a "March for Life" marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in Roe vs Wade, the Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, in Washington, January 22, 2008. (Jason Reed/Reuters. Used without permission or shame.)

If I didn't see it for myself, I wouldn't have believed it. The Washington Post ran a piece on Page A3 (!!!) of today's edition, about the March for Life. It is heavily biased... in favor of the March! No counter-commentary from the usual upstarts, just quotations from people who came from all over the country only for this one day: "Tens [sic] of thousands of abortion opponents took to the cold, gray streets of Washington yesterday, buoyed by a recent report that the number of abortions in the United States had hit the lowest level in years and vowing to continue the fight... DC police said there were no major incidents at the march." Buy hey, it gets better. On the website, in the Metro section, the Associated Press has an equally sympathetic video. It almost comes off as pro-life propaganda. Yeah, from the AP!

There's a message in here somewhere. What could it be???
.

4 comments:

Denise said...

David,
I think I would say the Washington Post coverage is better than it used to be, but still biased against. The article is on page A3. It uses one black and white photo. Unlike the photo from Reuters above the Post photo doesn't give a sense of the enormity of the crowd. It refers to the crowd as "tens of thousands". Hundreds of thousands is probably more accurate. There were over 20,000 at the youth rally and Mass at the Verizon center before the March. The Verizon center was at capacity and youth were being turned away two hours before the Mass began. Several EWTN observers who had been to multiple marches said it was the largest and youngest crowd it had seen. The post insists on labeling the marchers as anti-abortion or opponents of abortion rather than using the term pro-life.

The Washington Times put this story with three color pictures on the front page of the Metro section. It included three more black & white photos inside. It referred to the marchers as protesting the Roe v Wade decision. It did not use either pro-life or anti-abortion monikers.

So I guess I am grateful for the improvement in the Post and give them kudos for doing better. But I am in no way convinced they are on our side.

The Mighty Favog said...

I wouldn't be so sure the Post coverage is a fab sign for the pro-life movement.

In fact, I think it's been on life support since its inception, and I've not been impressed with it (except for the crisis pregnancy center wing of the pro-life universe) since the day I actually became pro-life.


www.revolution21.org

David L Alexander said...

"I wouldn't be so sure the Post coverage is a fab sign for the pro-life movement."

Yo, Fave, are you so sure it isn't?

The thing is, this is the best picture any major newspaper has given to anything remotely pro-life in a gazillion years (except the Washington Times, but I'm talking MAJOR here). As to the number of abortions being down because of RU-486, my Really Good Sources tell me that the overall abortion figures take the use of RU-486 into account, so the comparison is misleading. The Post forgot to mention that, so no, we won't get our hopes up, thank you very much.

Just like we won't be jumping up and down just because a Republican gets elected, since the pro-life movement has been the b**** of the GOP dating back to Reagan. With the Fredster out of the running, some of them are already plugging McCain. Geez, we never learn, do we kids?

By the way, our Research Department at mwbh just checked out your website, and we've made an executive decision. You're next week's "Plug This!" feature.

Stay tuned, and stay in touch. Go Huskers!

Crowhill said...

The most likely reason has nothing to do with bias, but lazy journalism. Journalists nowadays just re-phrase and reprint what they get in press releases.

Crowhill