I was stunned, when I read Ross Douthat’s op-ed, “The Abortion Media’s Blinders,” in The New Times’ Sunday Review, to find the most insightful, not to mention fair and balanced article yet written on the Planned Parenthood vs. Komen fiasco, which dominated the media’s attention at the end of last week. He hit the nail on the head when he reported on the absence of pro-life America in the midst of this heated controversy (that is, if you were only paying attention to CNN, ABC, CBS, and MSNBC):
[I]f you’ve followed the media frenzy surrounding the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation’s decision — which it backpedaled from, with an apology, after a wave of frankly brutal coverage — to discontinue about $700,000 in funding for Planned Parenthood, you would think all these millions of anti-abortion Americans simply do not exist.
The irony of Douthat’s pithy observation is while he calls the abortion media blind, he overlooks the way in which Planned Parenthood and the abortion media strong-armed Komen into a reversal of its decision within approximately 48 hours. As Brent Boszell observes:
Since Komen’s first announcement only two days ago, these network morning and evening newscasts collectively have cited it more than 13 times. And not surprisingly, these reports overwhelmingly slammed Komen and sympathized with the abortion giant.
This stands in stark comparison to the same newscasts virtually ignoring the Obama’s new ‘health’ mandate forcing thousands of Catholic institutions to defy their deeply held religious beliefs. In total, ABC, CBS and NBC have covered that story a whopping ONE time since the news broke two weeks ago today.
It stands to reason that Watchers Of the Ed Show (WOES) on MSNBC would agree with some of Douthat’s observations, since they never see what balanced reporting might look like. They could not understand why in the world the Komen foundation would want to disassociate itself from a “woman’s health organization” like Planned Parenthood, because they are never exposed to news like this:
And of course they won’t report on this, because they’ve been saying just the opposite since the story broke:
The mainstream media chooses to ignore certain facts such as Katherine Sebelius’ involvement in Planned Parenthood’s covering up child rape, which ought to cause anyone to disassociate themselves from the abortion giant. Instead the media cause people to sympathize with Planned Parenthood as a woman’s health organization, which also provides some abortions (300,000 a year, in fact). They ignore the fact that Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, and maybe that’s why Komen believes its money might be better spent elsewhere.
Yet Douthat’s was fair enough to point out many obvious facts you won’t hear about on MSNBC:
Three truths, in particular, should be obvious to everyone reporting on the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. First, that the fight against breast cancer is unifying and completely uncontroversial, while the provision of abortion may be the most polarizing issue in the United States today. Second, that it’s no more “political” to disassociate oneself from the nation’s largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place. Third, that for every American who greeted Komen’s shift with “anger and outrage” (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified.
He also noted that Komen’s donations apparently surged after it revealed it would be revoking funds from planned parenthood, and then added, “But of course, you wouldn’t know that from most of the media coverage. After all, the people making those donations don’t exist.”
To be completely fair, we need to point out that these people do exist, many of them are reporting the truth about Planned Parenthood and the travesty of abortion in this country on a daily basis, and they are making a strong difference. If you are interested in reading news that tells the other side of the story, check out my links in the right column of this blog.
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Biltrix 
Everything you’ve said is and was known by anyone who bothered to actually follow the story on something besides TV’s 15 second sound bytes.
Everyone is aware of the power of the anti-abortion movement. I believe that the virulent anti-abortion believers are a small percentage of those who dislike abortion. I also believe that only a small percentage of pro-abortion people are virulent in their beliefs.
What most conservatives don’t understand is that a lot of women remember when woman’s rights were almost non-existent and they remember that in those days there was a stigma attached to woman’s health issues, such as breast and ovarian cancer. They remember the conservative reaction to women’s rights and the ERA in particular.
When they say that Komen was making a decision based on a push from right wing anti-abortion forces, they went into rebellion mode. They saw it for exactly what it was…another back door attempt to make abortion legal but impossible to get.
Most women would just like to have the government out of their wombs. Conservative America isn’t going to get out of those wombs without a fight. They are obsessed with pre-birth but have a distaste for pre-school aid once those kids are born.
Okay, Bill, you make good points. But you shouldn’t equate conservative with pro-life, or if you prefer, anti-abortion. For example, (1) there are many pro-choice republicans; (2) many people who are against abortion are not politically conservative, and either vote for a republican candidate or choose not to vote in situations where they would go against their conscience by voting for a pro-choice democrat or republican.
For some, it’s a moral, not a political issue, although political measures, such as Katherine Sebelius’s recent HHS Mandated, force it to become a political issue. You are right, however, that the government should not be so involved — you should have added — in people’s consciences.
There’s another side to the issue that you chose to overlook. The larger percentage of pro-life americans who are, as you say, not virulent in their beliefs would like to see a more balanced presentation of the issue in those 15 second sound bytes and in the longer stories that one would typically see on every network news show. If you can provide a counterexample of balanced reporting on this issue from ABC, CBS, or NBC, I would greatly appreciate it.
Overall, I have to agree with you though. You only get the full story if you follow it closely and don’t depend on network news to stay informed. Unfortunately, most people just aren’t that informed, because network news is all they watch.
Thanks Bill.