AP Writes Dishonestly of Pro-Choice Rally; Stealth Corrects Later

At the world's most famous Anti-Hillary-Clinton website:

Here is the opening graf of an AP report on “anti-abortion voters” published Wednesday:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Calling their opponents Satan worshippers and savages, anti-abortion lawmakers on Wednesday insisted that Republican contenders keep an intense focus on social issues in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race.

“Calling their opponents Satan worshippers.” That sounds pretty serious. Tell us more, AP:

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican who is a favorite of the tea party, said supporters of abortion rights chant “Hail, Satan” to silence their enemies. …

“Arm-in-arm, chanting ‘Hail, Satan,’ embracing the right to take the life of a late-term child,” Cruz said of supporters of abortion rights.

Sounds pretty crazy, huh?! Why, these pro-life loonies are so looney they're accusing abortion advocates of chanting looney things like "Hail, Satan!"

Which is the exact takeaway that AP intends.

One problem with this takeaway: Pro-abortion advocates actually did chant "Hail, Satan" as a taunt against pro-choice advocates, who were singing "Amazing Grace."

Which completely undermines AP's intended spin -- you can't suggest someone is crazy for saying something that is demonstrably true.

The World's Most Notorious Hillary Clinton Hate Site goes on to note that a moment of Googling by the AP reporter would have disclosed this fact.

Either the reporter didn't bother -- either he assumed, without bother to check at all, that Ted Cruz was a Crazy Liar -- or else he did check, and chose not to report it.

Which is worse?

Mollie Hemingway has a much longer piece asking if the AP can be trusted on any abortion story at all. (Spoiler alert: Nah, bro.)

Hemingway notes the importance of leftwing bloggers in shielding leftwing reporters from the facts (so that they can then report falsehoods in stories). She notes some heroic efforts to debunk the undebunkably true story of pro-choice agitators chanting "Hail, Satan!"

Now, if an AP reporter is Googling to determine the accuracy of this claim, and he sees a bunch of leftwing bloggers claiming it's all fake, that might give a partisan reporter all the cover he needs to pretend it's not true.

By the way, here is AP's rewrite. Note that now that the "Hail, Satan" chant is known to be something that pro-choice agitators actually chanted, it's no longer newsworthy.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Invoking fiery references to Satan, “savagery” and a “culture of death” to criticize their opponents, anti-abortion lawmakers on Wednesday insisted that Republican contenders keep an intense focus on social issues in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race.

See, it was newsworthy when it seemed like a crazy allegation from Ted Cruz -- when it seemed like the information would tend to turn readers against the pro-life position.

But now that it is confessed (impliedly) that pro-choice agitators actually did chant "Hail, Satan" -- it's omitted from the story altogether. Now that it seems like information that would turn people away from the pro-choice position, it's embargoed. (As it was previously embargoed, back when it actually first happened.)

If the claim hurts conservatives by making them seem, to the reader or viewer, "Not Like You," then it leads a story.

But if the claim hurts progressives by making them seem, to the reader or viewer, "Not Like You," then it is disappeared from the story completely.

Hemingway goes on to analyze AP's and the media's behavior in the Gosnell case and in cases of abortion laws generally.

Anyone interested in the subject should also read an older piece by Carl M. Cannon, a former mainstream media reporter, called "Abortion: Journalism's Most Sacred Cow."

posted by Ace at 03:11 PM

| Access Comments