Dead silence

April 11, 2013

Kermit Gosnell

Normally those of us in the news business love trials, the more sensational the better. Just look at the coverage of the Jodi Arias murder trial in Maricopa County, Ariz. — or earlier national obsessions with Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson.

Which makes the media blackout of one ongoing trial a mystery. Or maybe not.

In Philadelphia, Kermit Gosnell is on trial on eight counts of murder: seven for babies he’s accused of killing with scissors after they were born, and one for a pregnant refugee who died after receiving an overdose of drugs. If true, Gosnell was running a slaughterhouse out of the Middle Ages.

Former employees have testified to the gruesome conditions at a clinic that catered to poor, minority clients. One staffer — who has pleaded guilty to the murder of two babies — calls what they did “like a beheading.”

Gosnell himself was making a fortune, taking in up to $15,000 a day. Police seized $250,000 in cash from his home. He also faces a separate federal trial for illegal distribution of prescription drugs.

The trial is receiving intensive coverage in Philadelphia and across the conservative press and Web sites. But national networks and newspapers? Not so much.

The reason seems obvious: Much of our press corps skews to one side on abortion. So even though what Gosnell is charged with is closer to infanticide — an unlicensed abortionist profiting mightily by killing the newborn babies of poor, minority women — somehow it’s not news.

Isn’t that a scandal, too?

source: new york post