In its 45-year history, the March for Life has received shockingly little attention from the mainstream media. It is America's largest annual human rights demonstration, drawing hundreds of thousands of participants every year, and it is uniquely dominated by the Pro-Life Generation, young Americans - most under the age of twenty-five. The March for Life and countless annual state and local marches held in tandem persist in spite of bad weather conditions and the predictable media blackout.
The March for Life is newsworthy by virtually any journalistic standard. So why do media pretend it’s not? This question has become even more glaring in light of the media’s fawning coverage of the Women’s March. Just a year old and conveying no clear purpose - other than to oppose Donald Trump - the Women’s March captured and maintained the mainstream media’s rapt attention. This year, the Women’s March’s “anniversary events” garnered nearly seven times the media coverage of the March for Life. According to MRC’s Katie Yoder, who studies March for Life media coverage each year, the three major networks (NBC, ABC, CBS) devoted more than twenty-five minutes to Women’s March activities and less than four minutes to the March for Life.
It’s no secret that the Women’s March is more closely aligned with the mainstream media’s political agenda. The mainstream media don’t even attempt to hide their disdain for President Trump, making Women’s March “resistance” organizers their political allies. But political bias alone does not explain or excuse the mainstream media’s wholesale failure to report comprehensively and accurately on the March for Life. Pretending we pro-lifers don’t exist and show up en masse to march for what we believe in hasn’t made us go away for forty-five years. In fact, our numbers have swelled, thanks to the growing number of young people who reject abortion, in recent years in spite of the media blackout. The Pro-Life Generation even travels from all over for this March — witness the University of Mary (North Dakota) sending students to the March.
The mainstream media narrative on the pro-life movement is that we are a small, outdated bunch with oppressive, even misogynistic ideas. Reporting on the March for Life — its size, its compassion, its positivity, its youth, and its fervor — would awaken Americans who stand in the sleepy “mushy middle” on abortion to the reality that the pro-life movement is an attractive place to be. In fact, it would be difficult for the media to spin March for Life coverage negatively if they wanted to, because the March for Life is too large, too upbeat, and too loving to come across as waning, hateful, or unattractive.
The mainstream media’s solution is: Don’t cover it at all. Pretend it didn’t happen. Exaggerate Women’s March coverage. Say you had to cover the government shutdown instead. Say you had a headache. Do anything except cover the March for Life. Liberal media legitimately cannot afford for Americans to know what our movement, led by the Pro-Life Generation, really looks like from the inside.
Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is president of Students for Life of America.
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