Sheepish News Outlets Finally Address Gosnell

by Barton Gingerich (@bjgingerich)

In case you missed it, the Twitter tag #Gosnell trended nationally for most of Friday. These tweets protested the reticence of news outlets that should have covered the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell for his grisly murders and jaw-dropping racism . It seems to have finally paid off. Slowly but surely, noted media companies are finally trying to address the “Gosnell affair.” No doubt the powerful pieces in USA Today and The Atlantic helped spur them along (though my favorite by far may be the blistering editorial in Get Religion).

The Washington Post responded with a very short and official “whoopsie.” The Daily Beast’s Megan McArdle admitted she simply didn’t have the stomach for it and apologized to her readers. David Weigel observed the banal evil involved with the case.   Anderson Cooper covered the Gosnell hearing on his own show.

However, much of the media came to its own defense. The Huffington Post‘s Laura Bassett and Ryan Grim waggled their fingers at conservatives, saying pro-life citizens “are drawing the wrong lessons” from the Gosnell case. Amanda Marcotte on her Slate blog thought the same as well, worrying more about abortion regulations and the difficulty of finding “good” abortion clinics. Josh Dzieza at The Daily Beast was perhaps the most absurd of all, insisting, “But another possible reason could be that, as awful as the case is, it’s not clear that there’s anything controversial about it…But another possible reason could be that, as awful as the case is, it’s not clear that there’s anything controversial about it.”

All in all, I agree with David Burge’s analysis of all this:

“Terrible business, this Gosnell thing.””Rather. Completely unhelpful.””Quite so. Agitates the natives. Tea?”#InsideTheMediaRoom

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) April 12, 2013