Tomorrow is the March for Life, so we turn our attention to abortion.
ABC News ran a story on January 21 about a woman candidate running for a House seat in South Carolina. The former navy officer, Nancy Lacore, has been endorsed by EMILYs list. The news story described it as “a liberal group that works to elect women to higher office.” It is not. This is factually wrong.
On the front page of the website of EMILYs List, it says, “We’ve been recruiting, training, and supporting Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot for 40 years and counting.” It says the same thing on the “About” us page.
No woman running for office who is Republican and pro-choice gets a dime, never mind any women (of either party) who defends the right of the unborn.
We checked to see if ABC was an anomaly in misreporting the mission of EMILYs List, and found it was not. We checked the last ten stories on this organization that appeared in major media outlets. To read our report, click here.
Here is a summary of what we found.
New York Times: in 3 of them, EMILYs List was incorrectly described
Washington Post: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described
Associated Press: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
ABC: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
CBS: in 5 of them it was incorrectly described
NBC: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described
There should not be any errors. EMILYs List makes it plain that it is not a pro-women’s group: it is only interested in advancing the cause of women who are Democrats and who are pro-abortion. But when it comes to identifying pro-life groups, the media never seem to err: they make sure the reader does not see them as being “pro-women.”
None of this is a mistake. Not to be misunderstood, there is no conspiracy at work. No, it is much simpler, yet more nefarious, than that. It reflects the ideological makeup of major media outlets. Conspiracies can be busted. This is much harder to root out.
