At the time of the Gosnell story, I remember that there was a nationwide, wall-to-wall media blackout. Every single mainstream media source was colluding with the others not to report on the story. It was impossible to get news for weeks, until finally the mainstream media’s pro-abortion, pro-infanticide bias became the story, and they had to start reporting on the trial.

For example, Life News reported that it took ABC News 56 days to begin covering the story, and they only did it because pro-lifers marched on their headquarters:

Fifty six days after the grisly trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell began, ABC broke its self-imposed blackout and finally offered coverage.

World News anchor Diane Sawyer belatedly told viewers that Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder against newborn babies, as well as on a slew of other charges. Terry Moran explained, “For two months, jurors heard often shocking, grisly testimony.” He described the details as a “house of horrors.” A house of horrors that ABC took 56 days to notice.

As the Media Research Center has aggressively documented, ABC went from March 18, 2013 (the trial’s start) through Monday afternoon with no coverage. Yet during the same time, the network devoted a staggering 187 minutes (or 70 segments) to other shocking criminal cases, such as Jodi Arias and Amanda Knox.

CNS News did a comparison between the Gosnell murder trial and the coverage of the gay NBA player:

In the eight days since NBA player Jason Collins announced he was gay, the news media have covered the story in 2,381 places. But in the first eight days of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his “House of Horrors” abortion business, the media covered the story in 115 places, meaning that Collins’ “gay” news received more than 1,970.4% more news coverage.

Given the media blackout, I wanted to blog about the new movie about the Gosnell murders. Although the Gosnell movie was filmed in 2015, it’s only being released next month. It turns out that the same sort of people who covered up for Gosnell in the mainstream media also got the release of the movie delayed.

A National Review story by the director explains what the movie is about and why its release was delayed.

Excerpt:

The film has a gritty “just the facts, ma’am” style, is well acted, with powerful, moving performances by Dean Cain, Sarah Jane Morris, and Michael Beach, among many others, and moves like a bullet train. So why has it taken three years to be released?

I realize, looking back, that I was quite naïve about how this film would be received. I truly believed that if we did it the right way, even the so-called Hollywood Left would appreciate our fairness in telling the story, see its value, and, furthermore, share our goals in getting this important story before the public.

Sadly, I was wrong. As I said, this town runs on fear — the fear not only of failure but, more insidiously, of being shunned because of your political opinions. […]More than once, I was asked questions like “Are you crazy?” or “Are you sure you want to do this?”

[…]Fear is destructive and dangerous. Fear is what allowed Gosnell to commit multiple murders. The powers-that-be were afraid to allow inspections of his clinic, even after multiple complaints, for fear of being called racist or “anti-woman.”

I was looking for some background on the two people behind the Gosnell movie, and I found an article by Terrell Clemmons over on the Salvo magazine web site. It turns out that the filmmakers were neutral on abortion before they looked into investigation of the Gosnell abortion clinic.

Excerpt:

Phelim McAleer was in Pennsylvania in early 2013 doing a series of screenings of his film FrackNation. As he often did when travelling, he checked the local paper for interesting court cases underway, and a case concerning a doctor in Philadelphia caught his attention. And so it happened that on one of his days off, he walked into the courtroom where abortionist Kermit Gosnell was standing trial for a slew of charges including (but not limited to) murder, infanticide, and multiple violations of state abortion law.

Phelim had seen a lot in his twenty-five years in journalism (he started his career in a part of Northern Ireland known as “Bandit Country”), but the evidence he saw that day in Room 304 of the Philadelphia Justice Center surpassed anything he’d previously encountered. The photos displayed up on a big screen—pictures of well-formed babies, some of whose necks had been snipped with scissors after live birth—were more horrific than anything he’d ever seen. All of this was shocking in itself, but what was even more astounding to him as a journalist was that the press gallery behind him was completely empty. There were no national journalists covering this case. Not one. How could this be?

He returned home to Los Angeles and told his journalist partner and wife, Ann McElhinney, that he had found the next project they would work on. At first, Ann wanted nothing to do with it. This subject was foreign territory for them, way outside their wheelhouse. Besides, both she and Phelim had always considered themselves neutral on abortion. Why venture into such a hornet’s nest?

Phelim ordered the court transcripts anyway, and Ann read them. Afterward, she agreed, Yes, they would make this film. It was more than an assent or a shared inclination. It was a conviction. Here was information of significant public interest, and it was shameful that no one was putting it out. A film about this had to be made; therefore, they would make it.

The film will open in 100 theaters, and when I looked, I saw that it was actually going to be a drive for me to get to the closest one.

It’s not surprising to me that the atheists in the mainstream media would seek to suppress the Gosnell story by not covering it. When you jettison objective morality from your worldview, you tend to fall back on a definition of morality that is more like “peer approval”. The mainstream media probably just thinks, if fewer people know the truth about this story, then they’ll still think I’m a good person for being pro-abortion. They lied and covered-up because their personal sense of moral goodness was at stake.