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Press Distortions in the Battle Over Abortion [1]

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Date: 1990-07-01 16:16:02+00:00

For years, the anti-abortion movement has pressured the media to adopt its terminology and worldview. Recent months have shown this pressure is working. In the renewed war over abortion coverage, the pro-choice side is on the defensive.

The first shots were fired by Richard Harwood, the Washington Post‘s conservative “ombudsman.” On March 25, Harwood’s column claimed that the Post‘s “news coverage has favored the ‘pro-choice’ side.” In a subsequent column (5/6/90), Harwood noted that the Post had failed to give the same space to the annual anti-abortion rally held on April 28, 1990 as it did to the April 9, 1989, pro-choice march. The anti-abortion event, he said, attracted 200,000 participants, as compared to only 125,000, “by Park police estimates,” for the pro-choice event.

After interviewing Harwood and his source, FAIR has concluded that Harwood was simply twisting the number. The actual National Park Service estimate on the pro-choice march, based on counts by both the DC Metropolitan and US Capitol police, was 300,000. This number was reported by the Washington Post and other media the day after the march. But Harwood arrived at his lower figure after talking with an off-duty Park police officer who had not even attended the event. Interviewed by FAIR, the officer said he had told Harwood that his “gut feeling”—after looking at a picture of the rally—was that there were 200,000 people there. Harwood reduced this number further to 125,000. When an ombudsman turns an individual’s “gut feeling” into plural “police estimates” and comes up with a figure 75,000 short, one might reasonably wonder what journalistic standards he’s supposed to be upholding.

In the wake of Harwood’s columns came an enormous four-part, 39-foot-long series on abortion coverage in the Los Angeles Times (7/1/90, 7/4/90). The giant series found room for only one viewpoint: that the press is biased against the anti-abortion movement. Although billed as “a comprehensive Times study,” little in the tens of thousands of words that followed could be described as a “study.” Instead, Times press critic David Shaw presented a mass of anecdotal evidence, employing an argumentative tone that obscured the lack of documentation.

The media were taken to task, for instance, for using the word “fetus” instead of “unborn baby.” Shaw criticized reporters for focusing on anti-abortion “extremists” like Operation Rescue’s Randall Terry, then chided the press for not covering Terry and Operation Rescue enough. After stressing the importance of neutral terminology, Shaw referred to choice proponents at one point as “abortion advocates”—a false description, especially of groups like Planned Parenthood, which aims to minimize abortions through birth control and sex education.

Post ombudsman Harwood’s dubious complaint about the two DC marches leads off a two-full-page installment on alleged bias against anti-abortion demonstrations. Ironically, the story is illustrated by the same picture the LA Times used on its front page to illustrate the April 28 anti-abortion march—masses of demonstrators topped by no less than 18 American flags. A more positive picture of a demonstration could hardly be imagined.

Shaw’s few numbers came mainly from a 1989 study by the conservative Center for Media and Public Affairs, headed by Robert Lichter. The Center studied abortion stories for eight months (1–8/89) in the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS and NBC. Shaw selected numbers from this study that seemed to show a strong pro-choice bias, ignoring the report’s bottom line (which, to be fair, the Center itself did its best to bury): “On our summary measure of views on abortion policy, the pro-choice side had a slight edge (53 percent to 47 percent).” An “edge” of this magnitude has debatable statistical value; one could argue that given the pro-choice majority in public opinion, and last year’s upsurge in the pro-choice movement, a 53-to-47 split underrepresents that viewpoint.

Shaw further misuses Lichter’s statistics in a sidebar carrying the sexist headline, “Can Women Reporters Write Objectively on Abortion Issue?” (7/3/90) Shaw chose to highlight the Center’s conclusion that women print reporters cited pro-choice viewpoints more than anti-abortion perspectives. Left unmentioned is the Center’s unheralded finding that male TV reporters tilted toward anti-abortion over pro-choice sources, and were more “unbalanced” than their female counterparts. FAIR had to call the Center to find out an interesting number that was left out of the study: Men reporters outnumber women in covering the abortion story by approximately 2 to 1.

Instead of getting the tough scrutiny they deserve, the Harwood and Shaw polemics have been adopted as fact and further embellished and distorted by a number of columnists: US News & World Report‘s John Leo (7/16/90), the Christian Science Monitor‘s John Hughes (7/18/90), the Washington Post‘s Mark Shields (7/31/90). The threat is that a steamroller effect will develop, forcing reporters, as David Shaw urges, to second-guess their use of neutral terminology such as “fetus.”

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[1] Url: https://fair.org/home/press-distortions-in-the-battle-over-abortion/

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