Each and every life matters – but, as the media cry “black lives matter,” they conveniently forget the millions [1] of black babies destroyed in abortion.
The phrase “Black Lives Matter” surfaced in the news and on social media after a grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown last month. The mantra continued after a viral video showed Eric Garner’s death after a confrontation by New York police. From the beginning, the media pushed the phrase [2] – while, at the same time, ignored a Nov. 27 CDC report revealing [3] 78 percent of the babies aborted in New York City in 2011 were black and Hispanic.
In correspondence with MRC Culture, pro-life leaders like Dr. Alveda King responded by claiming, “if [the media] really thought that black lives matter they would be protesting abortion on demand.” Former Rep. Allen West called out the “hypocrisy” of the “new leftist progressive soundbite” while The Radiance Foundation’s Ryan Bomberger asked, ““[H]ow sincere is the mantra that #BlackLivesMatter if the violent act of abortion and the disproportionate slaughter of unborn minority children is praised as ‘reproductive justice’?”
The Media Frame ‘Black Lives Matter’
During the broadcast network news shows, ABC, NBC and CBS reporters either incorporated “black lives matter” themselves or played clips of others using the phrase.
While reporting on the Garner story, CBS correspondent Jim Axelrod told an agreeing protester what was happening: “It's a very diverse crowd, but a largely white crowd yelling ‘black lives matter!’” during “This Morning” on Dec. 5. That same day, during “Evening News with Scott Pelley,” CBS showed a Boston crowd chanting “black lives matter!”
The phrase cropped up in CBS’ report of Ferguson too. The day before the CDC released the abortion report, Nov. 27, CBS “This Morning” host Anthony Mason stressed how “The slogan ‘Black lives matter’ is a frequent chant among protesters after the Ferguson shootings.” “It's a reminder,” he said, “that race relations in America are still a work in progress.”
ABC’s mention came from Ron Claiborne during “World News Tonight” on Dec. 4. Claiborne commented, “New York City's mayor, speaking about telling his own son, Dante, who is biracial, about what he called the ‘dangers he may face’ from police” after Garner. “This is personal,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in the clip cut by ABC. “People need to know that black lives and brown lives matter as much as white lives.”
NBC boasted the most mentions. The first showed New York’s Thanksgiving parade protesters chanting “Black Live Matter!” for the camera in response to Brown on Nov. 28 NBC’s “Today.”
In Ferguson on Nov. 28 – the night of the CDC report’s publication – Ron Allen reported for NBC’s “Nightly News.” He played a clip of a protester urging, “If black lives don't matter, Black Friday shouldn't matter.” That same clip played again Nov. 29 on “Today.”
Passing on the spotlight, NBC’s “Nightly News” on Dec. 3 featured NAACP Legal Defense Fund Litigation Director Christina Swarns as she declared, “[t]hese are people's children that are being killed.” She continued:
And you cannot have that happen and have no response. And so it's really a cry to be heard. There's a cry to be recognized and understood that their lives, that black lives, matter.
On Dec. 4 with Stephanie Gosk reporting, NBC’s “Today” again played a snippet from a Mayor Bill de Blasio speech, as he said, “Our history sadly requires us to say that black lives matter.”
For the same show the next day, co-host Savannah Guthrie asked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo about Garner. “We were just showing a sign of somebody saying ‘Black lives matter,’” she stressed. She probed:
“[W]hat people in the streets are saying is there’s essentially two justice systems here in this country, there’s one for African-Americans and there’s one for everybody else. Do you agree with that? Is it about race?”
Imagine a reporter asking that about abortion.
Pro-Life Leaders Respond to ‘Hypocrisy’
Black lives matter to the media – but not all of them, according to champions of the pro-life movement. Not once did the networks air the news [3] that, in New York City, 77.56% of the abortions in 2011 destroyed black and Hispanic babies.
“The liberal media looks the other way on this,” Priests for Life Pastoral Associate and African American Outreach Director Dr. Alveda C. King [4] told MRC Culture.
The niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. urged, “Pray that people will see right through their propaganda.” She continued, “The media has another agenda; if they really thought that black lives matter they would be protesting abortion on demand.”
She highlighted how the media “often stirs controversy to boost rating” and “support[s] abortion on demand.” “This media category ignores the fact that the abortion industry targets minorities,” she said.
“Even Planned Parenthood tweeted support for Ferguson using the Black Lives Matters hashtags,” she stressed, “and yet they abort more black and Hispanic babies that any other abortion provider in America.”
In correspondence with MRC Culture, Former Rep. Allen West [5] also commented on the media’s behavior. “The left and their media accomplices have discovered a new empty slogan but there are those of us who recognize their hypocrisy and the shameful policy of the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he acknowledged.
He called the “black lives matter” motto the “new leftist progressive soundbite.” “But actually,” he emphasized, “only the black lives that serve the progressive socialist agenda matter.”
That not only excludes the “millions of little black babies who will never know Dr. King's dream as a result of abortion” but also the “hundreds of young black men dead from gang violence in the failing inner cities” and the lack of a “quality education via the means of school choice,” he said.
The Radiance Foundation’s Ryan Bomberger [6] (a pro-life advocate conceived in rape [6]) told MRC Culture that, “Mainstream media does everything it can to protect the most racist institution in America that actually kills for a living—the abortion industry.”
“#BlackLivesMatter is a potent hashtag, but filled with false accusations and distorted context,” he said, and the “[m]ajor news media would rather foster hatred than healing.”
“There is racial injustice,” he admitted, “but the noise of the victim evangelists obscures the cases, like Eric Garner's, that truly deserve justice.”
“[H]ow sincere is the mantra that #BlackLivesMatter if the violent act of abortion and the disproportionate slaughter of unborn minority children is praised as ‘reproductive justice"?’ he challenged.
— Katie Yoder is Staff Writer, Joe and Betty Anderlik Fellow in Culture and Media at the Media Research Center. Follow Katie Yoder on Twitter. [7]