01 Jun 2000 Media’s Selective Indignation Molds Moral Conscience, by Murdock “Doc” Gibbs
We were shocked when a black immigrant in New York City was shot at by police over 40 times while simply reaching for his wallet. We were appalled by the merciless and brutal beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. We were horrified when two teens gunned down classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Why? Ultimately, it was because the media led us to our anger. They told us to be outraged. The media regarded these events as “fret-worthy.” And we responded. The media tells us what should shock, appall and horrify us. The way they phrase the news, frame it, construct it, edit it, place it, color it and repeat it – all this makes us respond the way we do. The images of teenagers fanning out frantically from a school building followed by cameos of girls crying and big athletes breaking down emotionally moves us to wring our hands, to search for reasons why and to care.
The media tells us what we need to care about and, conversely, what we need not care about. So what: millions of Africa’s Sudanese die brutal, merciless deaths at the hands of radical Islamic warmongers. So what: devout Christians are jailed and tortured in Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Egypt and China – their churches burned to the ground and their leaders murdered.
And so what: thousands of babies die every year on the very verge of being born healthy – with all the potential for life as any other human being. They get repositioned in the womb, have their little bodies pulled feet first through the birth canal so everything is out but their little heads; then their skulls are jabbed by sharp scissors to drain their brains until they die. And the atrocity doesn’t stop there: the tiny victims’ precious body parts are then sold to be used ostensibly for “fetal research.” So what.
By some estimates, another 6,000 babies – babies who are just seconds away from birth – will die this year, just like last year, as the distracted and compromised media looks the other way. These tiny innocents will suffer and die at the hands of abortionists who suck out their lives and sell their body parts. So what. Who cares? Not many of us, at least until the media tells us to by selecting this as an issue to be indignant about – that it is now fret-worthy.
We have a media that tells us what’s important and what’s not. Our national conscience, like malleable clay, sits idle and vulnerable in the hands of these media master potters. They mold our responses into what they deem politically expedient and socially relevant. So we let little babies die – with little protest – in these appalling, macabre, late-term, partial-birth abortions as we are weaned on a manipulative media that tells us how to think and how to feel.
We have become a people unsure of what our natural responses should be to the obviously heinous practice of partial-birth abortion. We wait for the dominant media to define what’s important and what’s not. Bold headlines and carefully crafted evening news blurbs alter our sense of judgment and moral indignation – and so the repugnant procedure continues.
Network news, newspapers, magazines and talking heads – you hold our consciences in the palm of your editorial hands. You can help put an end to the barbaric procedure of partial-birth abortions, this appalling blight on our national character. You can tell us how horrible this practice is. Explain it to us. Bring the pictures into our living rooms (with the appropriate warnings to young viewers, if necessary). Unsettle us. Wake us from our complacency. Move us to respond so this ugly, shameful procedure can breathe its last breath.
You, the media, were the voice of right in exposing Hitler’s death camps. You were the window of revelation during the 60s in showing the nation how American blacks were being treated in the South. You were the instruments of consternation when Nixon lied to us about Watergate. Where are you now for these defenseless pre-born infants who are being killed and merchandised in the partial-birth abortion death chambers of our land? You’ve got the power. Help us to care.
Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21.