{"id":1642407,"date":"2022-09-16T08:08:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-16T12:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1642407"},"modified":"2022-09-16T08:09:15","modified_gmt":"2022-09-16T12:09:15","slug":"politicos-one-sided-abortion-survey-exposes-media-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/politicos-one-sided-abortion-survey-exposes-media-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"Politico\u2019s One-Sided Abortion Survey Exposes Media Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpoliticos-one-sided-abortion-survey-exposes-media-bias%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1642407&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p>Were you harmed by the Supreme Court overturning <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>? Then Politico wants to hear from you. If you weren\u2019t harmed, or agree with the court\u2019s ruling, not so much.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the entire premise of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/08\/16\/abortion-laws-affecting-health-care-access-00051900\">survey<\/a> the Capitol Hill rag published during Congress\u2019 August recess. Based on the tenor of the survey, the publication wants to compile the proverbial \u201cparade of horribles\u201d that have transpired since the ruling in <em>Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow are abortion laws affecting your access to health care? We want to hear from you,\u201d says the top of the survey. \u201cSince the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, reports are surfacing of patients \u2014 even those not seeking abortion \u2014 having trouble filling certain prescriptions, and of patients being denied treatment for pregnancy-related complications.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The publication seeks people who either have been denied a prescription filling or have \u201cbeen denied emergency treatment for a miscarriage or pregnancy-related complication.\u201d It does not, however, seek stories of abortion complications that can include the mother\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Political Bias?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I\u2019m not saying that Dobbs hasn\u2019t had an impact, in part due to the twists and turns of challenges to state-level abortion laws, and in part due to medical providers (and\/or attorneys working for medical providers) acting overly cautiously to avoid legal liability. I\u2019m also not saying Politico shouldn\u2019t cover people who believe that the <em>Dobbs<\/em> ruling has harmed their access to care (abortion-related or otherwise). But to explicitly solicit stories from <em>only<\/em> one side of the abortion debate smacks of acting, well, one-sided.<\/p>\n<p>So I asked Brad Dayspring, Politico\u2019s vice president of communications, whether the tenor of the survey had anything to do with the fact that the publication\u2019s prime reporter on the abortion beat is a registered Democrat. (Disclosure: Dayspring and I worked together on Capitol Hill for most of 2008.) He responded thusly:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Alice Ollstein\u2019s stories on abortion are balanced and contain reporting that reflects diverse views on the issue.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He provided little substantive evidence of this assertion, but engaged in what amounted to a syllogism: Politico is non-partisan, therefore any reporter who works for Politico must by definition be non-partisan.<\/p>\n<p>Relating to partisanship and ideology, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/08\/16\/abortion-laws-affecting-health-care-access-00051900\">survey in question<\/a> referred to \u201cpregnant people\u201d \u2014 as opposed to calling them what they are: women \u2014 consistent with Politico\u2019s recent use of woke terminology.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What Are Reporters\u2019 Motives \u2026 ?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I followed up with another question. Democrats had an opportunity to fund all the abortion access money they wanted in their recent reconciliation legislation, which was not subject to either 1) a filibuster from Senate Republicans or 2) Hyde Amendment restrictions that prohibit federal funding of most abortions.<\/p>\n<p>Yet even as Democrats want to run on abortion as a political issue in the midterm elections this fall, lawmakers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/schumer-shrugs-as-roe-falls-democrats-reconciliation-abortion-hyde-amendment-filibuster-midterms-medicare-dobbs-supreme-court-11660651920?mod=opinion_lead_pos7\">didn\u2019t even try to raise this issue<\/a> as part of the reconciliation bill, not offering an abortion funding amendment in either the House or the Senate. Why hadn\u2019t Politico bothered to point out this contradiction? Did that silence have to do with reporters\u2019 political registration? Dayspring responded:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Instead of asking, \u2018why doesn\u2019t news organization X write about my preferred storyline instead of Y,\u2019 a political professional such as yourself might look to establish professional relationships with reporters and editors and pitch them ideas rather than personally attacking or making ill-informed judgments about them\u2014it tends to be a more productive approach.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s a nice conjuring trick, blaming the person raising the complaint: <em>If we\u2019re not running a story, it\u2019s only because you\u2019re not trying hard enough<\/em>. Yet at this point we\u2019ve seen far too much in the way of bias by reporters over the past several years <em>not <\/em>to question them. <\/p>\n<h2><strong>Admits Unprofessional Colleagues<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Take a look at that quote again, and another feature emerges. On the one hand, Dayspring tries to argue that his Politico colleagues are both professional and non-partisan. But in the next moment, he claims that not questioning motives will lead to a better outcome.<\/p>\n<p>If reporters at Politico are as professional as Dayspring claims, questioning motives shouldn\u2019t have anything to do with their actions. If someone brings a reporter a compelling story\u2014regardless of who that person is, or how the person approaches the reporter\u2014a good journalist should run with it regardless, for two reasons. To assume the purest motives, a reporter should dig into a good story to advance the public\u2019s right to know.<\/p>\n<p>Even if a reporter doesn\u2019t particularly like a story because it disagrees with his or her worldview, or for some other reason, a reporter should still look into it, for no other reason than fear. If a reporter at another publication digs into the matter and comes up with a compelling story or scoop, the reporter at the first publication might face an angry editor questioning why the publication got beat to the punch. (However, that competitive dynamic assumes that media outlets won\u2019t collectively collude to silence stories they don\u2019t want to cover, perhaps a questionable assumption in this environment.)<\/p>\n<p>Dayspring\u2019s statement admits that neither factor motivates Politico reporters. Instead, he states that whether a story gets covered could depend in large part on the extent to which someone sucks up (my paraphrase of his words) to a given reporter. Which makes one wonder about the reaction if and when a story takes off, and someone asks Politico why they didn\u2019t cover that story to any degree of depth sooner\u2014will they really respond, \u201cBecause people pitching the story hurt our feelings by not approaching us in the right way?\u201d<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Worm Will Turn<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>One final thought: Dayspring\u2019s comment about cultivating relationships goes both ways. Democrats won\u2019t remain in power forever, the hopes of some notwithstanding, and sooner or later they will need the conservative sources they ignore \u2014 or call \u201cracist,\u201d \u201csemi-fascist,\u201d or another insult <em>du jour<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The past several years should have provided a wake-up call for conservatives in the way the corporate media demonstrate their bias, particularly by silencing stories they dislike. Here\u2019s hoping that the next conservative administration responds to these reporters\u2019 pleas for insights, gossip, and stories with a similarly stony silence.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, and author of the book, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/chrisjacobshc\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>. Previously he was a senior health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a senior policy analyst in The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Center for Health Policy Studies, and a senior policy analyst with the Joint Economic Committee\u2019s Senate Republican staff. During the debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, Jacobs was a policy adviser for the House Republican Conference under then-Chairman Mike Pence. In the first two years of the law\u2019s implementation, he was a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee. Jacobs got his start on Capitol Hill as an intern for then-Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). He holds a bachelor\u2019s degree in political science and history from American University, where he is a part-time teacher of health policy. He currently resides in Washington, D.C.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Were you harmed by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade? Then Politico wants to hear from you. If you weren\u2019t harmed, or agree with the court\u2019s ruling, not so<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":1642409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1642407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1642407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1642407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1642409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1642407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1642407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1642407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}