The Most Glaring Example Of Undeserved Whining Over Coverage Of The Kermit Gosnell Abortion Trial

There's a very legitimate case to be made that the mainstream press has devoted too little attention to the trial of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. But that case should not come from a mainstream press publication that has failed to cover the story itself.

The New York Post did just that on Friday, writing an editorial entitled "Dead Silence" that lamented the "media blackout" of the topic. The reasoning for the blackout, the paper wrote, was scandalous:

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.

The problem: The New York Post hasn't been covering the Gosnell trial, either. Both a search of the Post's website and a Google search yielded only one other result — a February 2011 column from contributor Rich Lowry, the editor of the National Review, when the grand jury came out with its 261-page report.

Much of the finger-pointing has been somewhat undeserved. On Fox News Thursday, "Special Report" host Bret Baier noted that NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and ABC had mentioned the story zero times. He failed to mention that this was the first time he was bringing the topic up himself in a lengthy segment, according to a record of show transcripts.

The only other time Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald found another recent mention of the story on Fox was when Mike Huckabee brought it up in a panel discussion last month.

(H/T Media Matters)