Commentary: Marches, Planned Parenthood and balanced reporting on what’s really significant


By Richard Nelson
Special to NKyTribune

It’s been a week of marches and protests and major policy shifts, but in the pursuit of a story that seemed the pinnacle of “what’s important,” the institutional media neglected some major news.

The Women’s March on Washington, while an important event attracting nearly a half-million marchers, received an inordinate amount of attention—at the expense of weightier news. The New York Times carried at least seven stories about the march with at least three trumpeting how much larger it was than the Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Withdrawing the United States from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP)? A presidential review of NAFTA? The executive order reinstating the “Mexico City Policy” that prohibits federal funds for groups involved with abortions in other countries? Nope.

The March dominated and still does. Marchers dressed in costumes of female body parts received plenty of media attention. I’m still trying to figure out how a protest against objectifying women by people dressed in outfits of female genitalia helps their cause.

Saturday’s Women’s March, which might have been called the March for Certain Kinds of Women, was an event with an ideological tilt to the far left. It was comprised of women who support LGBT rights (conservative women’s organizations like Concerned Women for America were not invited), women who support abortion (Feminists for Life were excluded), and opposed President Trump. It didn’t include the 53 percent of white women or 32 percent of Latinas who voted for Trump.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told the crowd: “We’re not going to take this lying down, and we will not go back. For the majority of the people in the country, Planned Parenthood is not the problem, we’re the solution.” Of course, Planned Parenthood’s political activity amounted to around $30 million dropped into electing Hillary Clinton. Her victory would have ensured that the federal pipeline of federal grants and contracts ($528.4 million in fiscal year 2013–14) would keep flowing to the nation’s biggest abortion provider.

Richards and company make it sound as if Planned Parenthood loses federal funding women will be on the brink of a second-class healthcare. Truth is, they provide less than two percent of the nation’s cancer screenings and breast exams and less than one percent of the nation’s pap tests. There are only 665 Planned Parenthood’s clinics nationwide. Compare this to 13,540 federally qualified health-care centers FQHCs (358 in Kentucky) which do the same thing as Planned Parenthood, minus the abortions.

You will not hear much about alternatives to Planned Parenthood or their executives caught on tape making deals over baby body parts from entrenched, left-leaning media that refuses to report news that inconveniences their narrative. You will not hear much about the 471-page report of illegal activity recently released by Congress.

If big media had fairly reported such scandals from the beginning, Planned Parenthood may have been defunded years ago and not remained a campaign issue.

Our society is so divided that allegations of wrongdoing at one of the left’s cherished institutions are flatly rejected. Congressional reports are dismissed. While established media often feeds those doubts, they no longer have the luxury of grossly biased reporting without challenge. That’s because the bottleneck is broken. In the digital age of multiple news sources, the general public isn’t as dependent on a handful of media outlets so they will move to another channel when they detect an agenda that supersedes good reporting.

The U.S. Press Corps admitted as much in an Open Letter to Donald Trump last week. “We credit you with highlighting serious and widespread distrust in the media across the political spectrum. Your campaign tapped into that, and it was a bracing wake-up call for us. We have to regain that trust.”

There will be another march this Saturday. This time it will celebrate the pro-life cause. If past coverage is any indication, this stepchild of an issue for the institutional media will not be treated fairly.

Last year, one headline in the New York Times said the march was in the hundreds. Hundreds. A Washington Post story indicated that marchers were vaguely in the thousands. Professional estimates had it around 40,000. Truthful reporting about pro-life issues and events is so skewed that an organization formed last year called The Alliance for Fair Coverage of Life Issues.

Institutional media made a big deal about comparing Donald Trump’s inaugural turnout to the Women’s March on Washington. Let’s see how they report this weekend’s March for Life. It will be an indication of just how serious they are about their commitment about regaining the people’s trust.

Richard Nelson is the executive director of the Commonwealth Policy Center, a Kentucky based nonprofit organization. He resides in Cadiz with his wife and children.


2 thoughts on “Commentary: Marches, Planned Parenthood and balanced reporting on what’s really significant

  1. Speaking of addressing proprietary issues, shall we continue to completely ignore the FACT that abortion issues are completely a personal choice and need to be stricken from all political sidewinding?

    Just as it’s been proven that the death penalty absolutely does not deter / prevent crime, when do we learn and accept that sexual behavior will not, and cannot be, legislated? Never, ever.

    I’ve yet to see a caucus of seven females making national headlines photo-op . . .lined up in the White House . . .behind a President . . . signing a Bill commanding how our male population will be legislated (indeed dictated) on where and how to use their male sexual apparatus and any result therefrom.

    And please let us not discuss Pro-Lifers and the NRA response to killing school children. Far too baffling to intelligently and morally comprehend.

    RCooper
    KY expatriate

  2. I do not understand why conservatives are always outraged by the fact that pro-choice march organizers do not invite anti-choice activists, or why LGBT rights march organizers do not invite anti-LGBT hate groups. Would they also expect Civil Rights march organizers to invite the Klan? Would the also expect Dreamer march organizers to invite Trump supporters who are demanding the US build a wall? The idea is to have groups which support the goals of the marchers, not those who oppose them. It is not a difficult concept.

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