There are numerous instances of editors, journalists, anchors, and reporters showering praise on the nation’s largest abortion giant or defending its killing of seven million lives.
And Planned Parenthood has shown great appreciation for the love. Since 1978, PP has awarded 257 journalists, media outlets and projects with the “Maggie Awards for Media Excellence.” Named in honor of founder Margaret Sanger, the awards went to those who “enhance the public’s understanding of reproductive rights and health care issues,” including abortion. ABC, CBS, NBC and other news sources have been recipients of these awards. And some, like the National Association of Black Journalists, for example, have been recipients of thousands of dollars in grants… for the purpose of supporting programs regarding reproductive health (2013 tax return, page 64).
In an interview with Fusion’s political correspondent Katie McDonough, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards delightedly declared, “It’s been wonderful to see mainstream magazines now covering abortion stories of women and of men, of families, and beginning to get this conversation into the public sphere.” Indeed, it seems that everywhere you turn, someone is writing or broadcasting a puff piece about Planned Parenthood.
In an gushing piece about “activist extraordinaire” Richards, Washington Post reporter Caitlin Gibson couldn’t heap enough praise over the head of Planned Parenthood. “In person, the 59-year-old Richards exudes both a warm authenticity and a subtle impenetrability; there’s the sense that she means everything she says, but she isn’t saying everything,” she wrote earlier this year. Much more recently, Teen Vogue ran two pro-Planned Parenthood pieces — one painting clinic escorts as heroes, the other calling Richards “the most badass feminist EVER.”
On an episode of The View last year, pro-abortion co-host Joy Behar grilled Ben Carson about the GOP and Planned Parenthood. “How important is birth control then to the Republican Party? They should be out there really applauding Planned Parenthood for supplying birth control, mammograms and everything else,” she said, careful to leave abortion off her list, and parroting the mammogram lie. On a different episode, former Sen. Rick Santorum told the ladies of The View that Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms, and co-host Whoopi Goldberg insisted, “Yeah, they do.” Santorum had to clue her in that Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards had just admitted before Congress that same week that the organization, in fact, does not offer mammograms.
When the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s harvesting of aborted baby parts last year, Washington Post editor Jonathan Capehart admitted that he could not bear to view them, then appeared on Morning Joe defending the organization: “They do so many other things providing health care to women.”
Referring to the indictment of CMP head David Daleiden, Salon writer Bob Cesca gloated: “It’s a victory for more than just Planned Parenthood and reproductive rights in a climate where victories are scant,” he wrote, “It’s a victory for reality in a world where the Republican Party is increasingly ensconced in fantasy land.” He continued, “They [the GOP] needed the videos to be real in order to perpetuate this absurd lie about Planned Parenthood, that a chain of clinics which engages mostly in non-abortion related services is actively engaged in a holocaust against the unborn,” he continued, “coercing naive pregnant women into their clever abortion factories where patients are forced to undergo grisly procedures more closely associated with Rob Zombie movies.” Unfortunately for Cesca, the charges against Daleiden were dropped in July, and two forensic analyses have shown the videos to be authentic.
But the media isn’t just pushing pro-Planned Parenthood stories. Reporters and journalists regularly censor the pro-life movement. Joseph Schaeffer of Crisis magazine discovered that “former and even current Planned Parenthood officials themselves are also currently part of the management teams at corporations that own major American media outlets.” The New York Times Company Foundation is even a Planned Parenthood donor.
Could all of this be an explanation for the media’s love affair with Planned Parenthood?
