In his Sunday New York Times column Ross Douthat took the media to task for their reporting opinion of the Komen foundation’s decision to pull some funding meant for Planned Parenthood — a decision that was reversed after that media coverage, of the social and traditional varieties. “In story after story, journalists explicitly passed judgment on Komen for creating a controversy where none need ever have existed,” Douthat writes.
Three truths, in particular, should be obvious to everyone reporting on the Komen-Planned Parenthood controversy. First, that the fight against breast cancer is unifying and completely uncontroversial, while the provision of abortion may be the most polarizing issue in the United States today. Second, that it’s no more “political” to disassociate oneself from the nation’s largest abortion provider than it is to associate with it in the first place. Third, that for every American who greeted Komen’s shift with “anger and outrage” (as Andrea Mitchell put it), there was probably an American who was relieved and gratified.