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All in all, it appears to have been an exceptionally quiet year on the March for Life coverage front. I, for one, was a bit disappointed that things stayed so low-key, in part because you know that the U.S. Supreme Court hearings have cranked up the work — on both sides — behind the scenes.
I am in between meetings and classes in West Palm Beach, where I am doing some recruiting for the Washington Journalism Center. With a brief shot at an Internet connection, let me slip in here with a quick note.
Has Rick Warren become a media darling or what? The man certainly knows how to communicate a message and apparently has no trouble using the mainstream media to do so. And reporters are eating up this guy and all the wonderful things he does, including his “reverse tithing,” in which he says he keeps 10 percent of his income and gives the rest away ($14 million in 2004).
I realize I’ve been covering a great deal of abortion-related stories recently and some, including myself, might be somewhat beleaguered by the topic. But today is the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the media are running many stories about abortion with a religion angle. The feature I want to bring to light was written by an unabashedly pro-choice man in today’s New York Times Magazine. Author Eyal Press is the son of an abortion doctor in Buffalo who was a colleague and friend of murdered abortion doctor Bernard Slepian.
According to the Los Angeles Times website, the desk in the newspaper’s Atlanta bureau is currently “vacant.” This, for me, makes it even harder to understand the following story by reporter Jenny Jarvie. I predict there is a story behind this story somewhere.
I think, at this point, it’s safe to say that we can put the Ray Nagin and Pat Robertson thing to bed for a while.
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal has, in an indirect way, jumped into our discussion of media bias. Her latest column has much to say about the impact — journalistic and financial — of that yawning culture gap that exists between most mainstream journalists and a rather large chunk of readers, especially out there in flyover America and the deadly red zip codes. Click here to get to “Not a Bad Time to Take Stock: Thoughts on the decline of the liberal media monopoly and the future of the GOP.”
So the Supreme Court issued an abortion-related ruling Jan. 18 that was fairly limited in scope and, as a result, unanimously decided. It really is hard to characterize court opinions quickly, but a few choices in coverage are worth noting. Even though retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor began the opinion by writing quite explicitly to the contrary, reporters seemed to think the ruling had covered abortion precedent. Here’s The New York Times‘ Linda Greenhouse explaining how the ruling didn’t touch the abortion issue:
On Monday I offered some thoughts about a New York Times piece that looked at a crisis pregnancy center that offers ultrasounds, counseling, diapers, baby clothes and adoption referrals. I had mixed feelings about the piece. It began quite well but fell prey to some of the classic problems reporters have when covering the abortion issue.
