-By Warner Todd Huston
If you want a case of clear bias, the Washington D.C. affiliate of CBS will surely fill the bill for its bias against pro-life supporters. On January 23 the DC affiliate featured on its website a photo slide show of pictures taken at the March for Life rally held annually at the nation’s capitol. Curiously, though, there wasn’t a single photo of any pro-lifers. Instead the photo essay featured only photos of abortion-supporting protestors that stood on the sidelines taunting the pro-life marchers.
The photo slide show initially featured seven photos of abortion supporters such as one of marchers holding signs saying “Family Planning Saves Lives Worldwide,” one featuring women holding signs saying that abortion should be kept legal, and another showing a woman sporting an abortion on demand sticker.
Upwards to 50,000 pro-life supporters turned out in the DC cold to participate in the March for Life, yet apparently CBS could only find the small handful of pro-abortion supporters to photograph.
Pro-life advocates like Jill Stanek were incredulous and it wasn’t long before the comments section on the CBS website exploded with pro-lifers crying foul. Dozens of unhappy commenters remarked on how badly the bias of CBS galled them.
Finally a day or so later, CBS altered its slide show and added some photos of some of the actual participants of the pro-life march. The slide show now features 7 photos of pro-lifers and an equal amount of pro-abortion supporters.
Interestingly, though, there was no notice and no explanation by the CBS affiliate that it altered/added to the slide show and no explanation why the slide show had no pro-life photos for the first few days it was live on the web.
Pro-lifers can take heart that they were heard by the TV station causing it to take action to correct the sleight. But the fact that CBS put up a slide show of photos taken at a pro-life rally but didn’t feature a single photo of any pro-lifers pretty much shows the bias from which the TV station came when it initially posted the webpage.
But even with the alteration, we still see CBS’ bias. After all there were 50,0000 pro-life supporters and a paltry few hundred pro-infanticide supporters yet CBS gives them equal treatment as if they were the same.
Yep, the bias still reigns.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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