Race and the Gosnell Trial, Where Is the Media Now?

If Gosnell’s victims were white children, would we see different media coverage?

Kermit Gosnell

Today in America we all would like to believe that racism no longer exists but it’s not the case. That fact is most evident to me every night when I turn on the evening news and hear the stories about white girls like Laci Peterson, Elizabeth Smart, Natalee Holloway, little Caylee Anthony, and numerous other blond haired blue-eyed children who are abused, missing or have been brutally murdered. My heart breaks for each one of them and their families. Yet, I know there are little black girls and boys who have disappeared or died the same horrible, tragic deaths and the silence of the media regarding those children - black children - is deafening.

In January 2011, Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist who is black, was charged with eight counts of murder for killing a 41-year-old mother and seven newborn babies. Unfortunately, unless you live in Philadelphia where Gosnell’s clinic was, very little was heard about these heinous crimes.

Why? Besides the media’s natural, liberal-leaning bias and ardent pro-choice views, there could be other reasons.

While accusing someone of racism is one of the most overused and least documented insults in today’s politically charged climate, there are times when it is rightly used, like now. Gosnell is a racist of the worst kind because he preyed on women and young girls of his own race. Like a throwback to the Jim Crow days, Gosnell segregated waiting rooms, seating black girls on the filthy, first floor while white girls were ushered upstairs to slightly nicer and slightly cleaner waiting rooms.

For more than 30 years, Gosnell ran his clinic in a black neighborhood where he made millions of dollars killing black children and got away with it simply because he could. After all, no one really cares about poor, black babies, right? Gosnell just participated in and perpetuated the epidemic of black-on-black crime which is a national problem that has become increasingly more pronounced over the years.

And for the most part, the media ignored it, even though we have heard testimony during Gosnell’s public trial over the past several weeks of babies screaming and screeching while being killed, babies with slashed necks and babies beheaded. Gosnell cut the spinal cords of children and if that wasn’t grotesque enough, he then severed off tiny feet and displayed them in jars on a shelf as a sort of souvenir.

Where is CNN’s passionate, hard hitting, child-loving Nancy Grace? What about “fair and balanced” Fox News? In comparison to the way in which they covered other heinous crimes like the Casey Anthony or Jodi Arias trials, I really don’t see fair or balanced. Due to many pro-life people and organizations who have demanded the media cover the trial, several news organizations are now covering but certainly not to the extent the story deserves and there have been little to no mentions of the race angle.

If Gosnell’s victims were white children, would we see different media coverage? And where are the black leaders –where is Rev. Sharpton, Oprah? Michael Reagan rightly says that they are conspicuously tongue-tied when it comes to Gosnell.

America has been trying for decades to bury the race card but the truth is we are playing with a stacked deck – the mainstream media continues to prove that they see black children as having very different value and far less worth than their white counterparts.

It’s sad, shameful and not at all what America deserves. I remember as a child sitting in front of our black and white television watching reports from Selma, Alabama on what is known as “Bloody Sunday.” The black community in Lowndes County took those first steps to call attention to the struggle blacks experienced in the South and media was there to expose the horrible reality and the truth. Where is the media now?

Day Gardner is president of the National Black Pro-Life Union.

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