By Dave Andrusko
It is impossible to exaggerate the bias and the tunnel vision on display in the media coverage of Saturday’s massive (and it was huge) pro-abortion “Women’s March” in Washington, DC.
Just take the venomous, looking for “oops” moments that characterized the hostile coverage of Friday’s presidential inauguration and turn it upside down and, presto chango, you have the media love fest for the assembly in our nation’s capitol.
Talk about blowing kisses…
Consider just a few of the multiple contrasts/blindspots you could make with what will be the massive indifference to this Friday’s gigantic March for Life. For example take Paul Farhi, one of the Washington Post reporters who bobs up in the Style section and whose story ran Sunday, January 22, oh by the way, the 44th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.
He is politely berating the “mainstream media” for not catching on to the “social-media phenomenon” which was the Women’s March. His point? That the “legacy media” was so busy covering the lead up to pro-life Donald Trump’s inaugural as our 45th President, they gave “scant coverage” to a march that was driven by social media.
“As with those other grass-roots causes [captured in the “annals of online activism”], traditional news media outlets were late in catching up to the story,” Farhi tells us.
Let’s consider, as they say, the “context.” Whether you like, dislike, or are indifferent to President Trump, it’d be hard to miss the overwhelming onslaught of negative coverage from the November 8 election onward. Traditional media outlets loathe him for countless reasons, but most of all because he was and is circumventing them.
So if they were “late” to the Women’ March, it was because they were aiming all their guns at the then President-elect.
Do you think that the ultimate grassroots movement of our day, the Pro-Life Movement, might warrant inclusion in the “annuals of online activism” or even a reference? Of course not.
And do you think that the day after the January 27 March for Life there will be story after story, photo after photo, gushy profile after effusive tribute to the people who have assembled from all over the United States? To even ask the question is to answer it.
Finally, consider Fahri’s conclusion:
Even if they don’t spark movements, [Marcus] Messner [a journalism professor] says traditional-media outlets can still act as “an amplifier” of them, spreading attention and in some ways validating them. “It’s not unlikely that women who stayed home today will show up next time, as they saw that they will be part of a bigger movement.” Mainstream-media coverage, he says, “can now lead to an even bigger turnout down the road, if the movement continues.”
If it does, the news media will have learned a lesson from Saturday’s event, he suggests. Before the next big march, according to Messner, mainstream-media coverage will be “guaranteed.”
But the March for Life–and even more important all the local and state right to life rallies across the country–don’t need or rely on media coverage. And, if the likes of the Paul Fahris of this world took the time to research it, they’d know that our Movement is more than a little adept at using social media, in particular, but not exclusively, Facebook and Twitter.
The news media is now 44 years “late” to covering our Movement. It’d be safe to say it hasn’t done a lot of “amplify[ing]” or “validating” of us.
Farhi is just one example of the institutional blindness to a Movement that has grown and grown and grown–out of the media’s view but in plain sight.
Editor’s note. If you want to peruse stories all day long, go directly to nationalrighttolifenews.org and/or follow me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.