Kirsten Powers is making less sense in her Gosnell-media criticism

Daily Beast columnist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers continued her crusade Tuesday against the news media's lack of coverage (until recently) of the Dr. Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia.

"I am going to repeat this, because a startling number of people on the left, including New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, either cannot grasp this or are intentionally ignoring it," Powers wrote in a column at the Beast. "Repeat after me: The problem is that the trial has not been covered.' That the Times ran one story about Gosnell in January is hardly relevant to the trial that started in March."

Sullivan wrote Monday in defense of the Times' coverage of Gosnell, who is on trial for murder by performing extreme late-term abortion procedures. A spokesperson for Sullivan declined to comment.

Though Powers is credited for having spurred the national media into covering the trial via a USA Today op-ed she wrote last week, she's wrong about the Times' coverage...

The Times' Jon Hurdle did indeed cover the case on Mar. 18, the day the trial began, in a story headlined "Abortion Doctor’s Murder Trial Opens." And yet, that's a fact Powers is aware of. Later in her column: "The New York Times so far has run just one piece [regarding the trial], on A-17, the day the trial began."

Since Powers' original criticism that the national media has been slow to pick up on the Gosnell trial, others have jumped on board, the conservative media in particular. But as the Washington Post noted Monday, leading conservative publications also had not covered the case before Powers' column. And the coverage they did have was almost exclusive to criticism of other outlets not covering it.

To that, Powers wrote, "It’s remarkable how quickly a story of a trial about decapitated babies and maimed women was overshadowed by liberal rage at Fox News and the 'conservative media' who allegedly were hypocrites because they hadn’t been covering it, either."

It is demonstrably true that conservative media, outside of Fox News, were also late to pick up on the Gosnell trial.

Lastly, in her column Powers does this thing where she criticizes those who point to Fox as the sole reason for the Gosnell trial receiving attention, while also citing Fox as the only outlet to adequately cover it.

"The continued misleading claims that the trial has been widely covered are empirically false—as is [Salon's Irin] Carmon’s claim on CNN Friday that the only reason anyone is talking about this is because of Fox News, always the left’s go-to scapegoat," she wrote in her column. Then later: "...Fox News has run 11 stories over the course of the three-week trial, while The New York Times so far has run just one piece..."

We're requested comment from Powers.

@eScarry