Topic: Media Research Center
After the leak of a draft Supreme Court decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade and, thus, the right to an abortion across America, the Media Reserarch Center was eager to hype isolated incidents of violent protest into an huge issue. A May 4 item by Kevin Tober was typical:
Late Tuesday night, violent pro-abortion mobs took the streets in Los Angeles to express their rage over the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and handing the abortion issue back to the states to decide. In videos posted to Twitter and reported online by Fox News and The Daily Caller, among other reputable outlets, the violent left-wing abortion activists were seen attacking police officers.
While all three networks mentioned protests taking place across the country, none of the big three evening news broadcast programs reported on the violence that took place across the city. Instead, they showed images of peaceful abortion advocates chanting in front of the Supreme Court or marching down the city streets with protest signs.
The fact that Tober thinks wildly biased outlets like Fox News and the Daily Caller are "reputable" reflects the MRC's own untrustworthy bias.
The MRC went on to rant that even demonstrably peaceful protests outside Supreme Court justices' homes were a threat:
- Doocy GRILLS Psaki on Lib Mobs Harassing SCOTUS Homes, She Shrugs
- ABC, NBC Ignore Leftist Abortion Activists Doxxing SCOTUS Home Addresses
- CBS Yawns at Warren's Pro-Abortion Rage, the Left's Doxxing of Court Conservatives
- CNN's Jarrett: Screw 'Civility,' Protests Outside Justices' Homes Are Fine
- The View Touts Assailing Justices' Homes, Claims They Hate Free Speech
- WashPost Puffs Kavanaugh Neighbor Organizing Uncivil 'Doomsday' Protests Outside His Home (Tim Graham cited no violence but portrayed the mere act of protesting as"uncivil")
- MSNBC Refuses to Ask Dem Senator to Denounce Pro-Abortion Terrorism
- ABC Ignores Federal Marshals Sent to Protect SCOTUS from Pro-Abortion Mobs
The MRC then found an actual isolated incident of violence to obsess about, as Tober wrote in a May 9 post:
After a weekend of leftist abortion activists tormenting the six conservative Supreme Court justices at their homes and desecrating or setting pro-life clinics on fire, ABC’s World News Tonight decided on Monday to move on from the destruction of property and menacing behavior that took place for the simple reason that their behavior makes their demonic abortion agenda look bad.
ABC did cover it on Sunday’s World News Tonight and the overnight Monday shows World News Now and America This Morning, but left this act of terrorism in the dust by Monday’s Good Morning America.
[...]
ABC clearly realized letting their viewers witness what pro-abortion advocates are doing is detrimental to the pro-abortion cause. This is why they were moving the eyes of viewers away from images of their fellow leftists burning pro-life clinics with Molotov cocktails.
Kathleen Krumhansl highlighted this same incident in a May 12 post:
News of a violent terror attack against a pro-life clinic in Madison, Wisconsin, got the quickie treatment at the Latino networks, which spent a total of 74 seconds reporting the attack that included throwing two Molotov cocktails into the facilities, lighting a fire and posting a menacing graffiti warning that “If abortions aren't safe, then you aren't either”.
[...]
At MRC Latino we will be looking out for further reports on the arrests of the perpetrators of this intimidating and vicious attack over the Spanish-speaking press. Always watching.
Scott Whitlock ranted that "the corrupt network morning and evening newscasts" devoted "a scant 77 seconds" to the "terroristic attack" on the clinic, unironically adding, "Harassing citizens into complicity is not the way we do things in this country. And the press should call attacks like Madison for what they are: Terror."
By contrast, neither Tober nor Krumhansl mentioned an incident a few months earlier that, by their defintion, was also a violent terror attack: A Planned Parenthood clinic burned down in Knoxville, Tenn., on New Year's Eve, which investigators have determined was arson -- perpetrated, one may safely presume, by an anti-abortion activist. No fretting about something "demonic" happening here, of course.
The MRC also got mad when the history of violence from anti-abortion activists was brought up. A May 6 post by Alex Christy complained that CNN reported on "hypothetical Roe-related violence…from the 'far-right.'" A May 10 post by Christy noted that folks on CNN brought up "anti-abortion protesters outside of abortion clinics, blocking the way, making it almost impossible for women to go in and out of those clinics" as well as "sadly, bombing of some clinics,” then played whataboutism with the Wisconsin incident: "While CNN warns of right-wing violence, it makes excuses for left-wing intimidation tactics while pro-life facilities are targeted with Molotov cocktails." Curtis Houck similarly whined, right down to the same example of whataboutism, in a post the same day:
Tuesday’s CBS Mornings had a maddening end to its segment about the increasing threats to the lives of Supreme Court justices for striking down (or at least weakening) Roe v. Wade as congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane claimed intelligence shared with CBS views “extremists” (meaning the far-right) as the group to worry about amid tensions surrounding the issue.
Why, you ask? According to MacFarlane, such “extremists” could be looking to carry out attacks on “abortion clinics and government officials.” If all that sounded familiar, it is as CNN spent Friday telling its viewers the same thing.
[...]
MacFarlane should share this with Wisconsin Family Action out in Madison, Wisconsin after their headquarters was terrorized, a Northern Virginia pregnancy center whose building was defaced, and Concerned Women for America, whose building was vandalized with someone urinating on it.
The MRC appears deathly afraid of reminding people of the anti-abortion movement's decades-long history of violence and aggressive protesting. As Lauren Rankin summarized at Slate:
At Metropolitan Medical Associates in Englewood, New Jersey, where I volunteered as a clinic escort for six years, protesters would stand right by the front doors, pointing their cellphones at patients walking in while screaming “You’re a murderer!” into a bullhorn. Some of the protesters would write down the license plate numbers on the cars of my fellow clinic escorts and sometimes those of patients. I have been smacked in the face, elbowed in the ribs, and sexually harassed by anti-abortion protesters while volunteering as a clinic escort.
[...]
Eleven abortion providers and clinic staff have been murdered by anti-abortion terrorists since 1994, including Dr. Bart Slepian, who was shot and killed in his own kitchen after returning from synagogue, and Dr. George Tiller, who was gunned down while serving as an usher in church.
Anti-abortion protesters have harassed the children of abortion providers at their own schools and harassed the landlords of abortion clinics. Recently, anti-abortion fanatic Lauren Handy and her co-conspirators were charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act after they invaded an abortion clinic in D.C. The FACE Act, enacted in 1994 with bipartisan support, made it a federal crime to block access to or intimidate someone from entering a reproductive health clinic.
[...]
This isn’t an issue of the past. Operation Save America, a spinoff of the fanatical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue that blockaded clinics, laid siege to EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2017—cutting off access and supplies. Since 2010, death threats and physical threats of harm, as well as instances of assault and battery, have been steadily climbing at abortion clinics. In 2020 alone, there were five reported instances of arson at abortion clinics.
How’s that for “civility”?
Nope, the MRC isn't going to bring that up at all -- those facts conflict with its narrative of pro-choice people as the real violent ones. At no point in these posts did the MRC denounce ani-abortion terrorism, let alone admit that it exists, thus demonstrating that it is, in fact, quite cool with "harassing citizens into complicity."
