Akin’s Ignorant on Rape But Media Balance is Missing

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin said something pretty stupid in his now infamous remarks about rape and abortion on Monday.  He didn’t “misspeak” as he later claimed.  He is misinformed –call it ignorant—on the subject of rape, pregnancy and abortion. He isn’t a bad person and he isn’t totally incompetent. But he did speak up when he didn’t have the facts.  Any of us ever do that?  But because of the subject matter, his life of public service is obliterated and he is reduced to a laughing stock at best or a monster at worst.  Does his gaffe deserve the level of howling criticism and coverage the national media has rained down on him? Each has to answer that for themselves but it does make you wonder about the fairness of coverage as the liberal media raced to nationalize the ensuing controversy in an attempt to damage presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.Fortunately for those of us keeping score at home the Media Research Center offers its analysis of media coverage and as you sadly might expect, Akin’s error received four times the coverage of Vice President Joe Biden’s race baiting remark.

“In total, the three news networks – ABC, CBS, and NBC – gave Akin’s gaffe four times the coverage they gave to Vice President Joe Biden’s overtly racist comments last week in Virginia when he told a substantially black audience that a Romney administration would, “put y’all back in chains.” The obsession with Akin gave the liberal media yet another contrived excuse to ignore Barack Obama’s terrible economic record, and cast the campaign discourse back into the sewer.

Here are the actual numbers as broken down the M.R.C.

• During the first 72 hours of the Akin controversy, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows ran a combined 40 segments totaling nearly 89 minutes of airtime compared to less than 20 minutes for Biden.
• NBC and CBS both immediately attempted to link the “firestorm” created by Akin to Romney even though his campaign openly supports rape exemptions.
• Obama’s extreme pro-abortion record – including his support for partial birth abortions – was almost entirely ignored by the networks in 2008.
• The networks have given Akin 10 times more coverage than they gave to credible allegations by Juanita Broaddrick back in 1999 that Bill Clinton actually committed rape.

 Akin is just

 one of 435 U.S Congresspersons…Biden is a heartbeat away from being president…that’s the same Biden who recently called Republicans “squealing pigs”.  Hey…Fair is Fair, right?  Not in America’s media today.