Nonetheless, when I turned to social media I was hit by a multitude of self-sanctimonious people making claims that we, the pro-life faithful of the United States, are obsessed with the fetus, only care about babies before they are born, neglect the poor and the homeless and the disenfranchised. This is completely contrary to reality, and a topic I will debunk another time, because what I want to focus on is how in a world of instant news no one is seeing the breadth and the depth and the love exhibited by the prolife community - because this beautiful diversity is not showing up in the secular media or outside of our own echo-chambers. Why is that?
There has been much made of the silence of the media and unbalanced coverage in past Marches for Life, and anecdotally it seemed accurate. This year however with the historic moment of hearing from Kellyanne Conway, Vice President Pence, and even via Twitter the President of the United States, we thought there would be good coverage. So, I took a look at the local media coverage of the March for Life and how it contrasts (so far) with last week's so-called Women's March on Washington (where pro-choice men were welcome but pro-life women not). I even decided to tweet encouragement to our local news stations for equity in coverage.
Why do this? Because by far, the coverage has not been particularly equitable so far today. What do I mean by that? This afternoon we visited the social media (Twitter and Facebook) accounts of four local TV stations - NBC4, ABC6, CBS10, and FOX28 to check to compare their coverage of the two D.C. Marches. Now, a few things to keep in mind - the day is not over, and they may increase their coverage (in fact, after our tweets, Fox28 shared how they are covering and one station added a tweet (this may have been planned; we do not know, but the timing seems likely). I also did not compare coverage of the Columbus Roe event to the Columbus Women's March - both occurred about a week prior to the DC March. I am sharing this now, hoping that our supporters in social media actively (and politely and respectfully) reach out to these media cites to encourage them in the fair coverage. Use #WhyWeMarch and #Cbus4Life for the next day or so, so that we and they can see the impact. Also, go to the facebook posts and tweets that they did make and like and share.
Here is what we found, listed in order of most fair coverage to least fair.
Fox28:
10TV:
ABC6
NBC 4:
What Can We Do?
If you'd like to help us in 2017 as a volunteer in the role of media relations, let us know today. We are also working toward a budget that allows us to bring on a part-time staff member or intern who can do this type of work. If 150 people gave an extra $100 this year, we could meet that need. What do you say?
Note: We did not include the local print media in this review. However, kudos to the Columbus Dispatch, whose Washington DC Bureau office covered many of the local pilgrimages to DC which were shared on social media.