Remember when they were reported to be “pro-life”?
And even then, that was a pejorative, an accusation, used against people portrayed by the media as extremist and intolerant and dangerous. I remember it well, not all that long ago. It struck me in one particular interview by a TV news anchor with former Illinois governor Jim Edgar about his support for another political candidate, when the news woman leaned forward, frowned and said “But he’s PRO – LIFE!” It was one of those reality moments when I looked at the screen and thought….tagging someone as ‘Pro (for) life’ has become a scandalous political liability?! How jarring.
But that wasn’t enough to stick on people who uphold the sanctity of all life, no matter how it’s twisted and distorted, so the media changed the style books – the manuals of word usage for any media organization that determines how that outlet uses titles and references, for instance. In the secular media, they all wiped out the ‘pro-life’ designation and turned it into ‘anti-abortion’, usually with the word ‘activists’ tagged on at the end.
So we get headlines like “Abortion Foes Throw Support to Thompson”. Here’s the lead:
A prominent anti-abortion group has decided to endorse Fred D. Thompson’s presidential bid, giving the candidate a boost in his efforts to court conservative voters.
Right off the bat, two negative references, “foes” and a group that’s “anti-“ cue the reader to sentiments against that group. Walter Lippman, government propaganda specialist among other things, wrote about this use of language to form public opinion in a book of that name (“Public Opinion”). Today’s media are providing daily examples of Lippman’s warnings of thought control.
Here’s another one.
The National Right to Life Committee, a key anti-abortion group, endorsed Fred Thompson for president Tuesday, saying the former senator was the best candidate to beat Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani.
Thompson trails Giuliani, a former New York mayor who supports abortion rights, in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, according to most national polls.
A former mayor “who supports abortion rights” has two positive references in one phrase – support, and rights.
But it’s an ’emperor’s clothes’ thing with the media, who hover about as low in public opinion polls right now as Congress. Because the real people out there across America know that pro-life means standing for the most fundamental of all human rights. And without the guarantee of the right to life, arguments for ‘reproductive rights’ and ‘abortion rights’ and even civil rights are illogical and inconsistent.
They’re fooling fewer of the people all the time.