LifeSite News: Pro-lifers organizing ‘Tweetfest’ on Friday to break media blackout on Gosnell trial:
Pro-life leaders are issuing a clarion call to grassroots activists around the country to help break the media blackout surrounding the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell by joining in a “Tweetfest” tomorrow (Friday).
(Click here to join a Facebook event page with more info about the Tweetfest.)
In addition to asking pro-lifers to send out Tweets about the trial using the hashtag #Gosnell, organizers of the event are also asking them to contact their local media outlets to ask them why they’re not covering the trial.
Despite a continuous stream of dramatic, and often gruesome testimony coming out of the Pennsylvania courtroom where Gosnell is currently facing eight charges of murder, none of the major broadcast networks have covered the trial.
“If this was puppies that Gosnell was killing the media would be all over it,” Andy Moore, the director of AbortionWiki, one of the organizers of the “Tweetfest,” told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview.
Weasel Zippers: Number Of CNN Stories On Kermit Gosnell’s Trial: Zero…
CNN hasn’t reported on Kermit Gosnell since March 4th.
Patterico: What Is Behind the Kermit Gosnell News Blackout?
The attempt by leftists to black out the story is so complete, they’re even considering deleting the Wikipedia article about Gosnell.
All this got me thinking about why the Gosnell story is being ignored. I do believe that if a random masked man were walking into numerous delivery rooms and snipping the spinal cords of babies the mothers were trying to have, it would be perhaps the biggest story in the nation. I think there are two things that, in the mind of the media, separate this story from such a situation.
First, unlike babies in a delivery room, the babies are not wanted by their mothers. Quite simply, the media is putting a lower value on the lives of babies that mothers don’t want — even after they are born. I think this is a fundamental difference between people outraged by abortion and people who support late-term abortions. The former consider all life precious, while the latter group, which often falsifies the facts about why people obtain such abortions (about which more in a second), simply does not care as much about lives that are not wanted by their mothers.
This was made clear to me when I saw an Erick Erickson tweet saying that this would be a huge story if Gosnell had killed puppies. I immediately thought: but dog pounds do kill puppies, all the time, if they are not wanted. With dogs, we look at an overpopulation and decide that we will attempt to place the creatures in homes, but only up to a point. With humans, it is different — at least for now. We put unwanted children in foster homes, and no matter how long they remain unwanted, we do not simply put them down.
But a society that takes no note of a Kermit Gosnell is a society that is on a slippery slope towards putting foster children to sleep. And if you want to mock me for saying that, tell me what national newspapers have been reporting on the Gosnell trial. I’ll wait right here.
You would think that a profession (journalism) that prides itself on “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” would recognize this slippery slope and highlight it, but not so much.
LifeNews: Four Reasons Why the Media Isn’t Covering the Gosnell Murder Trial: (Warning: Disturbing images at link.)
Although Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder, witnesses have testified he murdered over 100 babies over three decades. If true, this would rank Gosnell as one of the top five known serial killers worldwide of the 20th and 21st Centuries by victim count.
But if you only tune in to broadcast t.v. news, you will have never even heard the name “Gosnell.” According to an April 4 open letter demanding coverage of the Gosnell trial from 20 conservative leaders:
Since the Gosnell trial began three weeks ago, ABC, CBS, and NBC have given the story ZERO seconds of coverage on either their morning or evening news shows. They have not covered Gosnell once since his arrest in January 2011, and even then, onlyCBS did so.
Foden cartoon via Townhall
Twitchy: Binder babes and FLOTUS’ bangs: News that got #MoreMediaCoverageThanGosnell:
On Friday, Twitter users launched a TweetFest to expose the appalling media blackout on accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell and his abortion house of horrors. Why is it necessary?
President Barack “Limp and Dead” Obama? Silent.
The national media? Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.
Wikipedia may even delete the “Kermit Gosnell” entry because his trial is just “a local multiple-murder story … nothing more.”
The media’s silence speaks volumes about their allegiance to the political Left. A story that should horrify any human being with an ounce of decency is conveniently swept under the “local crime” story rug. So what pressing national stories have captured the attention of “real reporters” in a way an infanticide trial didn’t?
Elizabeth Scalia: Gosnell Headlines? Gone, Baby, Gone! by Elizabeth Scalia:
The mainstream media, confronted with a house of horrors that was gestated and born of a single-minded mania for “protecting choice for women” had no choice but to report on Gosnell being charged for the murder of one woman who died while under his dubious “care” (another woman’s death had been “settled” for a financial consideration), and they mush-mouthed their way through his killing of at least seven living, viable babies, but they did not like this story.
They did not want to discuss that authorities had repeatedly received reports of Gosnell’s mayhem and had chosen to look the other way. They did not want to have to mention that Gosnell’s disgusting, “third-world” abortion mill—a place where women were abused, manhandled, disrespected, over-sedated, punctured, infected, sterilized, interiorly ripped, and otherwise treated like pieces of meat—would still be running, unimpeded, were it not for an investigation into illegal drug trafficking.
The Gosnell story—a story that by any measure deserved in-depth coverage, some serious discussion about regulation and responsibility, and a few features forcing the nation to consider just when a “late-term” abortion slips into the category of “infanticide” or what our leadership and politicians really think of all of this—proved too big and too messy for the mainstream media.
Townhall: Powers: The Media’s Failure to Report on the Gosnell Trial is “a Disgrace”:
The mainstream media’s lack of coverage and lack of interest in the trial of “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell is not surprising. But kudos to columnist Kirsten Powers for shedding light on their stunning negligence:
A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.
The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.
Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams intoned, “A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,” as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed — a major human rights story if there ever was one — doesn’t make the cut.
You don’t have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” It’s about basic human rights.
The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace.
Image via The Looking Spoon.
Weasel Zippers: House Republicans Slam Media For News Blackout Of Philly Abortion Doctor….
Absolutely disgraceful how the media is ignoring this trial.
Via Washington Times:
Reflecting mounting frustration over the lack of press coverage of inner-city Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial, a group of pro-life House members took to the floor to denounce what they call a “national media cover-up” of the sensational case.
“Again, I ask my colleagues and I ask the news media, ‘Why the blackout?’” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican. “Will America ever be told of the brutality of abortion?”
LifeNews: Congressman: If Gosnell Killed Babies With a Gun It’d Be National News:
Murdering newborns in the abortion clinic, it seems to me, is indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or a gun. Why isn’t that that child seen as a patient in need of medical care, warmth, nutrition and dare I say—love?
Now another national media cover up! In this case, even when a Jeffrey Dahmer-like murder trial of an abortionist named Kermit Gosnell, who ran the benign-sounding Women’s Medical Society, unfolds in a Philadelphia Courtroom replete with shocking testimony of beheadings, unfathomable abuse, death, and body parts in jars. To this day, the national news media remains uninterested, indifferent—AWOL. Why the censorship? Gosnell’s “house of horrors” trial fails to attract any serious and meaningful national news reporting.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is on trial for eight counts of murder. One count is for the death of a woman who died during an abortion at his clinic. Seven counts are for babies who survived their abortion and were born alive but then killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.
In the words of the Grand Jury report: “Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted babies: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors in the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ‘snipping.’ Over the years there were hundreds of ‘snippings’.
Pundit and Pundette: The brief, painful lives of Baby Boy A, Baby C, and Baby X:
Please read the biographies of three babies who lived and died at the Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia. It won’t take long.
Baby Boy A:
After an ultrasound was performed on Sue, Gosnell told the aunt that the girl’s pregnancy was further along than she had originally told him, and that, therefore, the procedure would cost more than the $1,500 that had been agreed upon; it would now cost $2,500. (Gosnell normally charged $1,625 for 23-24 week abortions.) The aunt paid Gosnell in cash at the Delaware clinic. He inserted laminaria, gave Sue pills to begin labor, and instructed her to be at the Women’s Medical Center in Philadelphia at 9:00 the next morning.
Sue arrived with her aunt at 9:00 a.m. and did not leave the clinic until almost 11:00 that night. An ultrasound conducted by Kareema Cross recorded a gestational age of 29.4 weeks. Cross testified that the girl appeared to be seven or eight months pregnant. Cross said that, during 13-plus hours, the girl was given a large amount of Cytotec to induce labor and delivery. Sue complained of pain and was heavily sedated. According to Cross, the girl was left to labor for hours and hours. Eventually, she gave birth to a large baby boy. Cross estimated that the baby was 18 to 19 inches long. She said he was nearly the size of her own six pound, six ounce, newborn daughter.
After the baby was expelled, Cross noticed that he was breathing, though not for long. After about 10 to 20 seconds, while the mother was asleep, “the doctor just slit the neck,” said Cross. Gosnell put the boy’s body in a shoebox. Cross described the baby as so big that his feet and arms hung out over the sides of the container. Cross said that she saw the baby move after his neck was cut, and after the doctor placed it in the shoebox. Gosnell told her, “it’s the baby’s reflexes. It’s not really moving.”
Twitchy: Obama ignores Gosnell horrors with media’s aid: Pesky babies didn’t ‘just come out limp and dead’:
Hey, Obama you know what might save one life? Maybe you even just discussing the Kermit Gosnell situation. Not worth it, though, huh?
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) April 11, 2013
Good question. As Twitchy has extensively reported, there seems to be a media black-out of the news coming out at the trial of monster Kermit Gosnell and his abortion mill house of horrors. The silence from President Obama has also been deafening. Citizens are rightly outraged and they are demanding answers. Why is the trial of a “man” accused of slaughtering innocent babies being ignored?
Someone on Twitter asked, “what do Kenneth Gosnell and Barack Obama have in common?”
John Nolte, Big Journalism: PHOTO: EMPTY ‘RESERVED MEDIA SEATING’ AT ABORTION DOC GOSNELL’S MURDER TRIAL:
Via the Get Religion blog at Patheos:
The picture above, for what it’s worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times.
John Sexton, The Conversation: Terry Moran: Gosnell Probably Most Successful Serial Killer in History:
Non-coverage of the Gosnell case has been an extreme and frustrating example of media bias for more than two years. The turnaround that has occurred in the last 24 hours is simply astounding. But this did not happen by accident. It’s the result of the extra efforts taken by social conservatives and online, conservative mediawhich kept a pilot light burning on this story. Special credit goes to Kirsten Powers who broke the logjam with a blockbuster column yesterday. And finally to Mollie Hemingway whose question to a Post reporter on Twitter really made the invisible wall of silence visible last night.
Looking Spoon: The Next Time Liberals Get High And Mighty “For The Children” These Screenshots Should Shut Them Up:
If people didn’t think the MSM was biased toward Barack Obama then they’re probably too brain dead to see the bias here…but this is a particularly egregious example of how depraved and evil they have become (or, at a minimum, they have an unconscionable tolerance of evil).
LifeNews: Teen Worker at Gosnell Abortion Clinic: “They Looked Like Babies”:
The one is so sick…what kind of mother brings her daughter to a place like this — to work???
Ashley Baldwin, a 15-year-old sophomore at University City High School, found herself employed at Gosnell’s abortion clinic and, despite no medical license or training, working alongside him performing gruesome late-term abortions.
From an AP report on the testimony:
Baldwin landed the job because her mother already worked there.
She was paid, and in no time went from answering phones to doing ultrasounds, administering intravenous medicine, and, ultimately, assisting in abortions performed by her mentor, Kermit Gosnell.
Now 22 and the mother of a 2-year-old son, Baldwin on Thursday told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing Gosnell’s murder trial of her unusual hands-on medical apprenticeship.
Baldwin also told the jury about seeing at least five aborted babies moving, breathing, and, in one case, “screeching” after late-term procedures at the clinic.
In Pennsylvania, abortions are legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, medical experts say, a fetus is capable of living outside the womb.
“They looked just like regular babies,” Baldwin said.
Baldwin said one baby was so big that Gosnell joked that “this baby is going to walk me home.”
She said the joke bothered her and she talked to her mother about it. Baldwin’s mother, however, was also a Gosnell employee. Tina Baldwin had worked there since 2001.
In other news….
John Hawkins, RWN: 14 Of The Obamas’ Most Decadent Vacations On Your Dime:
Judging by the schedule Barack Obama keeps, being President doesn’t seem like all that tough of a job. You play golf, you shoot hoops, you go on posh vacation after posh vacation and then you give speeches complaining about all the fatcats that are soaking the American people. Of course, living that kind of lifestyle seems a little hypocritical for a man who’s cutting off White House tours for the “little people” while he warns Americans about all those evil rich people who are supposedly looting them blind by keeping their own money. Of course, if anyone knows about looting other people’s money, it would have to be Barack Obama, who is enjoying a lifestyle that even Donald Trump would have trouble affording.
AIM: Soviet Agent Award for Mother Jones Reporter:
How fitting…
David Corn, the liberal writer and MSNBC analyst who based a storyabout Republican Senator Mitch McConnell on a secret and possibly illegal tape recording, is scheduled to accept an award named for Soviet agent of influence I.F. Stone.
The identification of Stone as a Soviet agent is not in serious dispute, except among his most loyal and sycophantic followers.
Equally scandalous, Corn is being presented the award by Jeff Cohen, who has started a petition through his radical organization,RootsAction, to give accused traitor Bradley Manning the Nobel Peace Prize. The RootsAction group is considered by some to be far to the left of Obama and the Democratic Party. Its honoring of Bradley Manning is an example of its extremist approach.
MRC TV: MRCTV Raw Footage: ‘Rally for Citizenship’:
At a Capitol Hill “Rally for Citizenship,” MRCTV’s Dan Joseph talked to protesters holding signs with messages to Marco Rubio who didn’t even know who Rubio is, couldn’t speak English, and said their kids’ school made and provided the protest signs.
Israel Matzov: ‘I will destroy America’:
***
It’s been a tough week for the slimey Clinton era hack, Terry McAuliffe and his business wheelings and dealings. First the news that his electric car firm GreenTech – the one he promised would create jobs and cars in Virginia – was hit with a tax penalty for lack of production…in Mississippi. Then the news that Virginia officials suspected from the start that GreenTech was a front for a visa-for-sale scam.
Now, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel calls GreenTech “McAuliffe’s Solyndra,” and describes a “creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts.”
Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you’ve got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.
Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party’s nominee for that position in this fall’s election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe’s words—”a Virginia businessman” intent on “creating jobs.”
Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.
In an act of desperation, McAuliffe is now sueing Watchdog.org for reporting on the “cash-for-visas” scandal.
WatchDog.org: McAuliffe car company sues Watchdog in libel claim:
A fledgling electric car company founded by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has suedWatchdog.orgfollowing an investigation highlighting the automaker’s use of a controversial government “cash-for-visas” immigration program.
GreenTech Automotive Inc. blames Watchdog for an alleged $85-million loss after publication of two articles detailing the woes of the government immigration program, called EB-5. In one article, a financial expert criticized the EB-5 program as “a fraud.” EB-5 has repeatedly come under fire for lax oversight. An Illinois program was recently the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe.
The EB-5 program was created in 1990, and offers green cards to foreign nationals who invest at least $500,000 in U.S. companies to create 10 or more jobs.
Matt Vespa, PJ Media: Sen. Cruz: Gun Control Will Cost Democrats The Senate:
I asked back in January if Obama’s gun control push gave us the 2014 midterms. In four months, support for stricter gun laws has dropped from 57% in December to 47% today. We’ve returned to normalcy on this issue. We have a bill that wouldn’t have stopped Newtown, and adds more needless regulations on law-abiding citizens that are trying to protect themselves, their families, and their private property. Yet, with the Republican filibuster roundly beaten in yesterday’s vote, the media attention is off Republicans – but will the spotlight be directed towards red state Democrats? Sen. Cruz told the Hill on April 10 that:
[I]n fact, in my view, as a result of their onslaught on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, I think there’s going to be a very significant consequence in 2014…I think as a result of this fight that President Obama is picking, I think the stage is set for Republicans to take control of the United States Senate because of this fight right now, because of coming after the right to keep and bear arms of peaceful law-abiding Americans. I think a number of red state Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 are going to lose their seats and I think they should.”
Ben Howe, Buzzfeed: The Online Right Is Freaking Awesome:
Last week, Ben Howe was pilloried by some in the conservative blogosphere for writing for BuzzFeed. Now he offers a tribute to the right’s vibrant online community.
Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been attacked by some conservative bloggers as a traitor to my ideology, an enemy of the conservative movement, and a sell-out.
And all of it has let me to this completely earnest conclusion: The online right is freaking awesome.
Here’s the backstory. Last week I published an opinion piece at BuzzFeed about a conservative video that I believed was too campy and lacking of substance to be taken seriously. I laid out my criticisms and closed with my concerns that productions of this caliber would stigmatize conservative artists, thus making it more difficult for their work to get produced.
I expected some negative response, especially from the Tea Party Patriots who produced the video, and I knew some conservatives would take issue with my decision to write the piece for BuzzFeed, which is not exactly a card-carrying citizen of the conservative blogosphere.
What I did not expect was to be taken to the woodshed and told that what I’d done was tantamount to ideological treason. Yet that’s exactly what happened when the article first hit Twitter.
Fox News: Colorado sheriffs plan lawsuit challenging state gun control laws:
More than half of Colorado’s elected sheriffs are planning to mount a legal challenge to the state’s sweeping new gun restrictions.
The Denver Post reports that 37 of the state’s 62 sheriffs will sue to overturn laws passed in March that set limits on ammunition magazines and expand background checks for firearms.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke told the paper that the proposed lawsuit would argue the laws violate Second Amendment rights. He said the lawsuit would likely be filed within the next few weeks.
The group County Sheriffs of Colorado has opposed a ban on high-capacity magazines, and about a dozen Colorado sheriffs spoke against the new laws during President Obama’s visit this week. The laws take effect July 1.
The Conversation: Assassination Attempt: Bomb Package Heading For Sheriff Joe Arpaio Intercepted In Flagstaff:
Fox News reports that a suspicious package en route to Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Phoenix headquarters was intercepted by authorities in Flagstaff Thursday.
Authorities in Flagstaff, a city in Northern Arizona, x-rayed the box and determined it contained an explosive device. A bomb squad was deployed and neutralized it.
Flagstaff Police, the FBI and U.S. Postal inspectors are working the case and authorities there say they already have investigative leads.This follows a string of attacks on law enforcement that started a little over two months ago.
Benny Johnson, Buzzfeed: Here’s The Democrats’ Plan To Get Gun Control Through The Senate:
As the new debate over gun control heats up, senior Senate aides on both sides of the issue laid out advocates’ plan to get their bill through the Senate.
The strategy advocated by gun control supporters in the Senate was described to BuzzFeed by two senior Republican Senate aides working to oppose the effort, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate leadership aide working to get it passed.
Francis R. Porretto: Slow And Steady Wins The Race: A Manifesto:
I was minded to write about abortion today, specifically why the right to do as you please with your body doesinclude poisoning yourself with drugs but doesn’t extend to murdering an infant developing in your womb. However,this post at Cold Fury has reoriented me for the nonce.
Mike Hendrix has long been one of the clearest and most stalwart defenders of freedom in the DextroSphere. Indeed, he’s many cuts above quite a large fraction of the salaried commentators of the Right, for two overriding reasons:
- He sees clearly;
- He’s consistent over time.
This morning, he cites the value of those virtues…to the other side:
The Left, as always, is playing a long game, while we sit back and tell ourselves it couldn’t possibly be happening, and then are shocked–SHOCKED!–when each new piece of the puzzle slips softly but firmly into place.Update! Prime example, via Glenn:
As annoying at Toomey is, we should remember that this is like 2% of what the libs sought. They’re grabbing crumbs and calling them a cake.
Uh huh. Why, we’re WINNING!, gang! And the Left continues hacking merrily away at our rights, while we deceive ourselves so as to avoid facing the facts and fighting back against them. And thus the frog eventually boils. Sorry, Kurt, losing a little more slowly is NOT winning. A slave who is granted one day a week of partial freedom to remove his chains and do more or less as he wishes before stepping back into harness for the other six is still a slave.
The Foundry: Morning Bell: Obama’s Fake Budget Marketing Exposed:
President Obama is marketing his new budget by saying it has “more than $2 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue.” Is this true?
In a word, no.
In fact, his spending increases and advertised spending cuts cancel each other out—leaving only a massive tax increase.
The President cancels sequestration’s spending cuts—therefore raising spending—by the same amount that he reduces spending. When that’s done, all that’s left is a $1.1 trillion tax hike.
Nice Deb 