And almost no media came to cover it. In a presidential election
year. In which race and politics and social issues are more prominantly
debated than anytime in the last four decades.

The post below on this reports the basics. Let’s get back to that. There’s a fascinating and important story here.

The Washington Times is one of the only media that covered the event. Julia Duin has a few different stories on it - good reporting - and she
originally noted that the absence of media coverage was oddly
conspicuous. But that’s hard to find now. It may be there, I’m just not
accessing it easily. So here’s what Duin reported the other day:

I noticed two discordant events during Thursday’s pro-life demonstrations by black activists on Capitol Hill.

One was the lack of TV cameras. They said a Fox crew showed up
early, then left on another assignment way before the demonstration
began. But here you had folks wearing T-shirts with sayings on them
like “black genocide” and carrying signs saying “Abortion is not a
family value” and traipsing down SE Capitol Street in steamy weather
between the Democratic National Committee HQ and the Republican
National Committee building. There were kids, there were pastors, there
was quite the cross-section. It was colorful and in your face and there
were folks like Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, popping off
gospel hymns every time she got near a mike. It was just the right
stuff for good TV footage. Our photoographer, Astrid Riecken (one of
whose photos is shown with this post) had a field day shooting stuff
and six photos ran in Friday’s paper.

But where were all the other media outlets and the networks? CNN?
The wires? It’s like these folks did not exist. Here you had pastors
like Arnold Culbreath with Protecting Black Life, a Cincinnatti group,
claiming that Planned Parenthood disproportionally builds its clinics
in majority-black and Hispanic areas.

(I called Planned Parenthood and they said they build them where the
need is. Jesse Lee Petersen, a pastor out of Los Angeles said, “Planned
Parenthood says they provide health services to the black community. I
ask: What is healthy about killing black children?)

Goooood question. Why aren’t more media folks asking this? Duin wonders the same thing:

Another pastor, Stephen Broden, was saying there has
been 14 million black abortions since 1973 and that 1,452 black
children get aborted each day. Are these folks telling the truth? Isn’t
it even worth interviewing them to see if they are? Why the near-media
blackout? Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is
as liberal as they come on this issue and his voting record shows it.
Isn’t this a huge election issue? Why, then, the dearth of reporters
and photographers?

It’s an inconvenient truth they don’t want to cover.

So now, the available reporting at the Washington Times by Duin (besides the above) analyzes what this story might mean to the
presidential campaign, an analysis that other major media should be
doing.

“We are here to urge Democratic candidates that
donations from Planned Parenthood are racist to the very core,” said
Day Gardner, president of the National Black Pro-Life Union, as she
stood in front of Democratic National Committee headquarters on South
Capitol Street. “I’m sick of hearing this is a Republican issue. For
children killed or maimed by abortion, it’s a life-and-death issue.”

Officials for Planned Parenthood declined to comment, as did Democratic Party and Republican Party officials.

Which says plenty, right there.