Why is The Gosnell Trial Not Getting More Attention in the Media?

I found this quite insightful.

Mark Baddeley :

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that the problem here is that this story cannot be framed the right way for the mainstream media. I don’t want to blame them entirely for this problem – their consumers prefer stories that are framed in a way that fit with how they already see the world anyway. But there has been a constant frame for decades of brave pro-abortion advocates and doctors fighting for women’s health against misogynist knuckle draggers who want to force women out of the workplace and into the kitchen and delivery room. There is simply no way that this story fits with the frame *at all*. And so there is no story. A story that can’t fit the pre-existing frames open for it can’t be communicated within the limitations inherent to the media at this point in time. On this story the conservative and Christian sites have a gift on a silver platter because the story fits entirely within their frame, and is what their punters already expect to see happen sooner or later. 

I’m sure that the partisan cheerleading for the pro-abortion side is at work here, as was painfully evident with the Komen reporting debacle. If the editors wanted to tell this story they’d try and overcome the frame problem.  Having framed all the stories on this issue to fit the pro-abortion side, there is no frame available to help communicate this one. And without that frame contemporary journalism finds it hard to function. Their consumers don’t pay them to force them to think.

I would add that this story makes the line between infanticide and abortion very blurry.  Some pro-choicers are willing to go there and embrace that blurry line and even cross it but more of the general pro-choice public is not.  I would assume that most in the mainstream national media would be pro-choice and so the suits at the big networks have a hard time with that blurry line.  Thus, no story.

There is an unarticulated unease with this story that make pro-choicers very uncomfortable.  It's like they are handing pro-lifers ammunition and that can't be good.  To bury it is better than to face it honestly.