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Newsbusters' increasingly creepy criticism of Tiller reporting

June 02, 2009 11:36 am ET by Jamison Foser

Yesterday, Newsbusters' Kyle Drennan complained that a news report about the murder of Dr. George Tiller didn't describe him as "controversial."  In response, I wrote:

Calling Tiller "controversial" just because because conservative anti-abortion terrorists tried to, and finally did, kill him is insulting, and suggests some justification for the assassination. Calling him "controversial" blames the victim.  Drennen's complaints that CBS didn't offer such justification for Tiller's assassination is creepy, at best.

Today, Newsbusters' Colleen Raezler makes it explicit, complaining: "In failing to highlight what Tiller's work actually entailed, reporters do nothing to help their audience understand why this man was targeted."

I thought conservatives usually criticize people for offering "understanding" to terrorists?

Raezler goes on to complain that the media has portrayed Tiller as a "martyr":

Tiller as Abortion Rights Martyr

Broadcast networks painted Tiller as a man willing to die in defense of women's rights.

All of the broadcast coverage noted past attempts people have made to disrupt Tiller's work - a bombing of his clinic in the 1980s and a 1993 attack in which he was shot in both arms - which, while pertinent to the story, also increased the aura of martyrdom that now surrounds him.

Notice what Raezler doesn't say: she doesn't so much as hint at disapproval of the terrorists who bombed Tiller's clinic and shot him.  Instead, she is unhappy that mentioning those events increases "the aura of martyrdom that now surrounds" Tiller.

UPDATE: Two months ago, Raezler complained that media didn't make clear that a plane crash victim "made the money for this exclusive vacation  was paid for partly through abortion [sic]." Here's Raezler:

Media Ignore Abortion Connection in Montana Plane Crash Coverage

...

[C]orrectly reporting the deaths of fourteen people as a tragedy doesn't mean the media necessarily did their job. If they feel compelled to note that victims were "ultrarich," they should also note the business that made them that way. Particularly if it's as controversial as abortion.

...

though the AP deemed it necessary to include facts about family's economic status, they failed to think it necessary to include that Feldkemp made the money for this exclusive vacation  was paid for partly through abortion.

Feldkamp is listed as the president of Family Planning Associates Medical Group, Inc., a health care organization that is California's largest for-profit abortion provider. Its Web site lists 17 different abortion clinics throughout the state, and  the group provides abortions up to the 22nd week of pregnancy. 

Gingi Edmonds, a pro-life activist, reported this on March 24. Yet as of April 2, the mainstream media appeared to have whitewashed Feldkamp's abortion connection.

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    • Author by NiceguyEddie (June 02, 2009 11:59 am ET)
      2  
      Nicely done, JF. They've been riding the tiger for so long, and they've now fallen off and are getting mauled by it. And yet soemhow they have the audacity to act surprised. Family Values indeed. Pro-Life indeed. These people are scum. Murdering, hateful, scum.
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    • Author by twseattle (June 02, 2009 12:12 pm ET)
         
      The liberals can paint all the pictures and cast all the 'auras' they want to but until the trigger was pulled it was all just talk. It was one of the sociopathic simpleton soldiers of the milita movement, brainwashed by the hate speech of the far right, who used the sanctuary of a church for a duck blind and put Dr. Tiller into the unfortunate position of martyrdom. Now death-penalty opponents will be defending his right to life.

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    • Author by IRONY 101 (June 02, 2009 12:21 pm ET)
      2  
      I read an interesting post elswhere the other day, to the effect: Would right winger abortion opponents support the enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding of George Tiller's murderer, the domestic terrorist, Scott Roeder, in order to determine whether others were involved and whether other victims have been targeted? What say you, Sean Hannity, et als.?
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      • Author by Col. Harlan Sanders (June 02, 2009 1:32 pm ET)
           
        That's what I've been thinking, Irony. Not only Roeder, but others fitting his profile in that hotbed of terrorism, Kansas.Are all right wing Christian Fundamentalist anti-government militia types suspects? Will there be profiling and bounties? A black site in a corn field?
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    • Author by magnolialover (June 02, 2009 2:02 pm ET)
         
      Why does it matter how the people who got filled in a plane crash made the money they used to charter the flight? That's not liberal bias, that's just stupid, and has no bearing on the story whatsoever.

      I should expect no less from newsbusters.
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    • Author by captfoster2 (June 02, 2009 3:37 pm ET)
         
      News-Busters is to actual news and reporting as Fox-Noise is to the same damn thing!

      The only truth this collection of right-wing lunatics ever say are when they speak their names and the organization they represent!

      I've gone to this News-Buster site and I have yet to find much that is of any real substance, let alone legitimate facts being used to back up their collective BS!

      As I see it. I want sites like News-Busters, MichellMalkin.com, Rush, Savage, etc, etc to exist, same as the worthless Fox-Noise... so that people can go to them and either come here or use other variations of common sense to realize just how pathetic they really are.
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