In their own words: Journalists offer excuses for not covering Gosnell trial

Why has there been such a blackout in the media surrounding the serial murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell?

Over at Patheos, writer Mollie Hemingway decided to go straight to the source.

Sarah Kliff is a health policy reporter for the Washington Post and has written extensively on Todd Akin, Sandra Fluke, etc.  So why is she not reporting on the Gosnell trial?

"I cover policy for the Washington Post, not local crime, hence why I wrote about all the policy issues you mention," she told Hemingway. (To which National Review deputy managing editor Robert VerBruggen responded, "Makes sense. Similarly, national gun-policy people do not cover local crime in places like Aurora or Newtown." Zing.)

At least Kliff responded.  Hemingway notes that when she tried to get straight answers from an Associated Press reporter, he stopped responding.

How about Politico?

Since Washington Post reporter Sarah Kliff tried to justify her lack of coverage of the Gosnell trial by calling it a local crime story, I thought I’d add other local stories into my search. Thanks for the idea! So here’s what I found out.Politico‘s search engine pops out 165 results on Trayvon Martin (local crime story in Florida), 94 stories on Komen, 233 on Sandra Fluke and 866 on Todd Akin.

Guess how many stories Politico has published on Gosnell.

Did you guess zero? You win!

When Hemingway reached out to The Atlantic and senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta, things got testy...

She responded, “I don’t know why you’re acting like I assigned every Atlantic article ever written,” deleted her initial tweet and then ignored the reader deluge of questions to her about the disparate coverage.

I asked her who I should be speaking with about the editorial decisions and she has declined to answer.