Abortion and media bias: exhibit A

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 08, 2012

Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times proposes adding Sandra Fluke to the list of “accidental heroines” of the feminist cause. The column itself is standard liberal cant, suggesting that women cannot be happy or healthy without the Pill. If you read the piece you recognize Greenhouse as a hard-core leftist ideologue.

What caught my eye, however, was not the column itself but the author ID:

Linda Greenhouse, the winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize, writes on alternate Thursdays about the Supreme Court and the law. She reported on the Supreme Court for The New York Times from 1978 to 2008.

From 1978 to 2008, while Greenhouse was reporting on the Supreme Court, what would you say was the most contentious issue facing the American judiciary? Abortion, right? Now that she’s writing opinion columns rather than front-page news reports, you can easily tell that Greenhouse favors legal abortion. But you really didn’t need to wait. While she was a beat reporter covering the Supreme Court, Greenhouse participated openly in pro-abortion demonstrations.

Can you imagine an active pro-lifer being assigned by a major media outlet to cover the Supreme Court debates on abortion during those crucial years? Not a chance. But the most influential newspaper in the US saw no difficulty with giving an avowed pro-abortion advocate free rein to slant coverage of the abortion debate. And if that’s all you know about the American media coverage of the abortion issue, it should be enough.