Bozell Column: Planned Parenthood, Spiked
Those censorious liberals who truly hate the very existence of the
Fox News Channel denounce it for being a political organization, not
truly a news network. Behind that line is decades of liberals being
able to strangle, smother, and spike news stories they didn't like.
Liberals defined what "news" was, and what it wasn't. They're still at
it today.
Take the pro-life group Live Action. On February 1, they released
shocking videos showing what they found when they brought hidden
cameras into Planned Parenthood clinics, with a man and woman posing as
pimp and prostitute. An office manager was taped telling the "pimp" how
to evade the law, such as lying about prostitutes' ages if they were
children 14 or under. Any older and the clinic would be obligated to
report to the authorities. "We want as little information as possible,"
she said conspiratorially.
That matches very nicely with the mindsets of ABC, CBS, and NBC,
which absolutely refused to acknowledge the existence of this damning
video. (Fox News did cover it, and so did CNN.)
The
same gaggle of broadcast TV watchdogs which has mustered endless
outrage over the notion that the Catholic Church would fail to alert
authorities about sexual abuse of minors is utterly uninterested in the
sexual abuse of minors when someone more pleasing to secular
progressives - like that abortion factory Planned Parenthood - is
caught on camera.
Live Action has been exposing Planned Parenthood since 2007. You
would think that by 2011, their clinic personnel would be more careful.
It is just the opposite. Their disinterest toward statutory rape and
child sexual abuse is shocking.
The latest Live Action exposes began with a visit to a clinic in
Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The office manager advised the "pimp" that
underage girls should lie about their age to get around any troublesome
questions about statutory rape. She also insisted an underage girl is
"entitled to care without Mom knowing what the hell is going on."
This woman has now been fired. But lying and squashing information
is apparently Planned Parenthood policy. Another video broke, this time
from Falls Church, Virginia, where a clinic worker told the man "We
don't necessarily look at the legal status, like I said. Abortion
appointments do require photo ID. It's nothing as far as records. It's
just photo ID that's ever going to be required."
In Roanoke, Virginia, a Planned Parenthood staffer suggested the
man consider going to the Health Department with his little girls,
since it would be cheapier and easier: "They're discreet. They're
confidential. They, you know, don't tell people what's going on,
because - frankly - it's nobody's business."
The video exposes continued. In Charlottesville, another clinic
worker sympathized with the pimp: "Anybody here can help you.
Everything here is confidential. We can't give any information out."
The networks refused to acknowledge these stings. But it's not a
matter of journalistic principle, objecting to hidden cameras. It's all
about politics.
Twenty years ago, on the night of Halloween, 1991, ABC's "Prime
Time Live" aired a story based on its own investigation, complete with
hidden cameras, of...crisis pregnancy centers. They were out to expose
the allegedly awful practice of pro-lifers advising pregnant women
What caused this perfect storm of stings?
Ron Fitzsimmons, then the executive director of the National
Coalition of Abortion Providers, wrote in a September 4, 1991 memo: "I
went to the ABC program Prime Time several weeks ago and they
immediately agreed to do an 'expose' on the issue of crisis pregnancy
centers."
Fitzsimmons
told the Media Research Center that "[Prime Time producer] Ben Sherwood
is mad at me about that memo, those words I used. It looked like I was
directing that whole show. But I was on the phone every day. I gave him
all of that stuff. I gave him all of those names and clinics. Ben would
call me every day and ask me about the situation in certain states."
Last December, Ben Sherwood became the new president of ABC News.
Now you understand why it's not surprising that ABC spiked the pro-life
story, even if it proves they are complete hypocrites.
But there's more. In 1991, all three networks used a congressional
hearing chaired by liberal then-Rep. Ron Wyden as the news hook for
their hidden-camera probes. Fitzsimmons said the hearing was his work,
too: "This story would not have been possible without the hearing," he
said, "and that was my idea."
This is why liberals sound so phony when they say Fox is a
political organization - and by contrast imply that ABC, CBS, and NBC
never act like ideological cogs in someone else's publicity machine.
They've been at it for decades.
