MediaWatch

From the August 1990 MediaWatch

Study

PRO-ABORTION BIAS DETAILED BY L.A. TIMES

How the political beliefs of editors and reporters influence news coverage is seldom a concern raised by the national news media. That's what made Los Angeles Times media reporter David Shaw's July 1-4 four-part front-page series on abortion bias so extraordinary.

Shaw noted that abortion opponents believe "media bias manifests itself, in print and on the air, almost daily." Shaw confirmed that belief: "A comprehensive Times study of major newspaper, television, and newsmagazine coverage over the last 18 months, including more than 100 interviews with journalists and with activists on both sides of the abortion debate, confirms that this [pro-abortion] bias often exists."

A number of major reporters whose primary beat is abortion agreed with Shaw's conclusion. "I think that when abortion opponents complain about a bias in newsrooms against their cause, they're absolutely right," Boston Globe legal reporter Ethan Bronner told Shaw. (See additional admissions in box on page 7).

When Bronner wrote a story explaining how an abortionist would be "destroying" the fetus by "crushing forming skulls and bones," Bronner recalled an editor told him "As far as I'm concerned, until that thing is born, it is really no different from a kidney; it is part of the woman's body." To talk about "destroying" it or about "forming bones," the editor said, is "really to distort the issue."

Indeed, reporters' personal views favoring abortion have an impact upon what the American people learn about the debate. Reporters have ignored stories that would cast doubt on the fundamental case upon which "abortion rights" are based. Bob Woodward, The Washington Post's star investigator of Republican wrongdoing, discovered the media's reflexes a few years ago when he revealed a 1973 memo between liberal justices admitting they were "legislating policy and exceeding [the court's] authority as the interpreter, not the maker of law" in deciding Roe v. Wade. No one picked up the story. Woodward told Shaw: "There are more people in the news media than not who agree with the [Roe] abortion decision and don't want to look at how the sausage was made." Shaw also learned:

"The media's language consistently embraces the rights of the woman (the primary focus of abortion-rights advocates), not the fetus (the primary focus of abortion opponents)." When the Louisiana legislature passed an anti-abortion bill, it was the nation's "harshest," and most "restrictive," not, as abortion opponents believe, the kindest, to the unborn child, or the most protective. Reporters "have referred to those who oppose abortion 'even in cases of rape or incest' (circumstances under which most people approve of abortion). But the media almost never refer to those who favor abortion rights 'even in the final weeks of pregnancy' (circumstances under which most people oppose abortion)."

"Abortion opponents are often described as 'conservatives'; abortion-rights supporters are rarely labeled as 'liberals.' Abortion opponents are sometimes identified as Catholics (or fundamentalist Christians), even when their religion is not demonstrably relevant to a given story; abortion-rights advocates are rarely identified by religion. Abortion opponents are often described as 'militant' or 'strident'; such characterizations are seldom used to describe abortion-rights advocates, many of whom can also be militant or strident -- or both."

"Cynthia Gorney, who covers abortion for The Washington Post, says she's troubled by the media's tendency to portray the anti- abortion movement as 'dominated by religious crazies' and to 'ignore what I think are the very understandable and reasonable arguments that are put forth by the pro-life side.' Susan Okie, medical reporter for the Post, says she herself 'had sort of a mental image of the anti-abortion groups as all being extremists' before she began writing much about them."

"Like most newspapers, the [Milwakee] Journal had long used 'pro-choice,' without any complaint from the staff that it was unfair. But when Sig Gissler, editor of the Journal, wrote in a column that the paper would also begin using 'pro-life,' more than 80 reporters and editors petitioned him in protest before the column was even published."

"The media rarely illustrate stories on abortion with photographs of aborted fetuses -- or even, generally, of developed fetuses -- claiming that to do so would be in bad taste and might offend readers. But no such concern inhibits the media from showing photos of starving, tragically bloated children in Ethiopia."

Pro-abortion bias on the campaign trail: "There were races in which the media said an abortion-rights advocate's victory showed the political strength of that movement when, in fact, most of the votes in the race actually went to anti-abortion candidates. That was the case in Republican Tricia Hunter's narrow victory in a special Assembly primary in San Diego last summer....But Hunter actually received only 30% of the vote; the other 70% was divided among five anti-abortion candidates, one of whom finished fewer that 200 votes behind her, with only 20% of the registered voters going to the polls. The Washington Post was one of the few major news organizations to note all these mitigating factors."

Noting the difference between coverage of Planned Parenthood President Faye Wattleton and Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry: "Time magazine headlined its profile of Wattleton last December 'Nothing Less Than Perfect' and said she was 'self- possessed, imperturbable, smoothly articulate,' 'imperially slim and sleekly dressed...a stunning refutation of the cliche of the dowdy feminist.'"

"....But Terry is almost always described as 'a former used car salesman'; the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Newsweek, among many others, have all referred to him that way."

Boston Globe reporter Eileen McNamara, who admitted using the phrase to describe Terry, said "most reporters 'try to be fair,' but most support abortion rights, and 'I think we were delighted to find out that he sold used cars.'"

In some cases, editors aren't even keeping up on the anti- abortion side. Witness the ignorance of two major newspaper editors on special "pain-compliance" techniques that police have used against pro-life activists, a story the national media have mostly ignored. Shaw found that "Coverage of abortion protesters' problems has been so slight" that Jack Rosenthal, editorial page editor of The New York Times, and Meg Greenfield, editorial page editor of The Washington Post, "said they had never heard of the 'pain-compliance' practices and resultant charges of police brutality."

When it came to the questionable indictment of pro-lifers on supposed violations of the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Rosenthal said "he didn't even know RICO was being used against abortion protesters until told of it in the course of an interview for this story."

These admissions cut to the very core of complaints about media bias. Today, editors are not simply favoring the side they prefer, they're failing to report the activities and concerns of the side they oppose. In other words, they're not doing their job.