FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 24, 2013
CONTACT: MEDIA@LIVEACTION.ORG
ARLINGTON, VA – Citing a dire need for honest reporting, Live Action has organized a “March on the Media” campaign to call out the “big three” American news networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. The pro-life advocacy group is launching a multifaceted initiative to call attention to how the media reports on the abortion issue, including a petition drive, a website (lifemarchonmedia.com), and open letters to the networks.
“ABC consistently flinches in the face of the ultimate human rights abuse – abortion,” one letter reads in part. “The public expects you to impart knowledge, to tackle hard truths, and to bring us to terms with our own biases. Yet your network and others sedulously censor and suppress the news on this vital issue, to the detriment of the public and to your own discredit.”
Live Action reports that all of these steps will culminate in rallies outside major media outlet headquarters – a March on the Media – scheduled for the near future.
“Like it or not, the major news networks have huge influence in our country,” said Lila Rose, President of Live Action. “Millions of Americans get a sense of the world through national filters like ABC, CBS, and NBC. So it’s inexcusable when these networks, in whom so much public trust is invested, refuse to report the facts on one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time.”
Rose’s organization is showcasing a slew of reports by the Media Research Center on selective and biased reporting of the abortion issue, from the Kermit Gosnell trial to Wendy Davis’s filibuster against the recently passed House Bill 2, which regulates abortion in Texas.
State Senator Davis – to whom, the MRC reports, the major networks devoted three times more coverage over 19 days than they did to the 58-day Gosnell trial – will visit Washington, D.C. tomorrow to raise funds.
“The media has flinched from the reality of abortion for decades,” Rose said, “but the degree to which they mischaracterize and whitewash this issue has become egregious lately. How can you go on about a senator’s sneakers and completely ignore the reason you’re talking about those shoes in the first place: because she’s championing a procedure that literally tears helpless children to pieces and puts women’s lives and health in extreme danger?”
Rose says she wants to point the media in a new direction. “A change is long overdue for our big news distributors,” she said. “It’s time for these networks to end their blackout of the truth on abortion – how it irreparably harms women, babies, and society.
“The abortion-friendly reporters and executives in New York and Washington will not come to terms with this fact unless we bring it to their door,” Rose said. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
Live Action is a youth-led movement dedicated to building a culture of life and ending the human rights abuse of abortion. The group uses new media to educate the public about the humanity of the unborn and investigative journalism to expose threats against the vulnerable and defenseless. More information at LiveAction.org.
