This Is the Amount of Coverage the Media Gave the March for Life VS the Women's March
Multiple mainstream media outlets have come under attack for how they chose to allocate coverage of two demonstrations that occurred recently — the Women’s March and the March for Life.
A report from media watchdog NewsBusters — a division of the Media Research Center — indicates that during their evening newscasts on Friday, ABC and NBC provided less than three minutes of combined coverage of the March for Life, which occurred earlier in the day
CBS, meanwhile, chose not to cover the pro-life march at all.
The media watchdog group said this is not unusual for the country’s largest pro-life demonstration, as it has also seen lackluster broadcast coverage in prior years as well.
This trend continued, despite the fact that 2018 marked the 45th year of the march, which usually occurs around the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling — a decision that legalized abortion on the national level.
Moreover, in 2018, President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the rally via a live stream. Also, the same day the march took place, the House of Representatives passed legislation that protects babies born after a failed abortion.
Indeed, the March for Life drew a dense crowd of people from across the country.
With the theme of “Love Saves Lives,” the rally attracted hundreds of thousands of pro-life protesters, who arrived at the nation’s capital to call for abortion to end, according to LifeSite News. The attendees were greeted not only with a speech from Trump, but with addresses from Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan as well.
But the March for Life received considerably less mainstream media coverage than the second annual Women’s March, in which women across the country took to the streets to protest Trump, among other things.
NewsBusters reported that on Saturday evening — following the first day of the Women’s March — ABC, NBC, and CBS provided a combined six minutes and 43 seconds of coverage for the liberal rallies, three times as much as they had given to the March for Life.
The media watchdog’s report came out Saturday, the night before the main Women’s March in Las Vegas actually occurred.
Although cities such as New York and Los Angeles did see large turnout for the Women’s March, NewsBusters’ Katie Yoder pointed out that the Women’s March in Washington seemed to draw a noticeably smaller crowd than the pro-life march that occurred at the same place.
THIS.
The 2018 @womensmarch at reflecting pool vs. the 2018 @March_for_Life on the mall. pic.twitter.com/k6aITlMHrp
— Katie Yoder (@k_yoder) January 20, 2018
NewsBusters also reported that Spanish language television showed similar bias when covering the marches.
Researchers at MRC Latino determined that Univision dedicated 20 seconds to the March for Life on Friday night, while allotting two minutes of coverage for the Women’s March.
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