PHILADELPHIA, April 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In his weekly column for Catholic Philly, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput takes aim at the nation’s primary national media for their “failure” and “allergic disinterest” in covering the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell.
“Some stories, no matter how unsettling, just can't be ignored – even when some people are determined to look away,” said the archbishop.
Chaput noted that “most prestige national media have seemed remarkably eager to ignore the story until shamed into covering it.”
The archbishop lays out the case that the story is much more than a local story, noting also that “the vivid details of the Gosnell clinic tragedy have the kind of salacious appeal that few national media would normally avoid – if the issue were anything else.”
“But,” he adds, “abortion is too often, and in too many news rooms, exactly the kind of topic that brings on a sudden case of snow blindness.”
Archbishop Chaput writes that the media lethargy in covering Gosnell is not surprising. “It's part of the fabric of a culture that simply will not see what it doesn't want to see about the realities of abortion,” he writes.
He concludes: “The brutality in abortion is intimate, personal and permanent. It violates women, and it kills a developing human life every time – whether the venue is a ‘Women's Medical Center’ style meat factory or a soothing suburban clinic. What makes the Gosnell story unique is that it should distress anyone with its details, pro-choice or pro-life, regardless of religion or politics.”
And turning back to the mainstream media he adds: “But of course, people need to know about an evil before they can do anything about it.”