Poll: Voters Think Pro-Abortion Media Bias Behind Poor Gosnell Coverage

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 25, 2013   |   3:03PM   |   Washington, DC

A new Fox News poll shows voters believe a pro-abortion bias in the media is behind the poor coverage of the Kermit Gosnell murder trial.

Most national media outlets are either ignoring the trial of the late-term abortion practitioner or providing every little coverage. A new report shows two networks have not covered it and one covered it for a mere 13 seconds.

The new poll asked voters why they thought the Gosnell case received relatively little attention from the national press. The results found 41 percent of Americans believe pro-abortion bias is the reason why. Another 26 percent think it is just a local crime story and 17 percent say the details are too gruesome for the media to show.

From the Fox News poll:

Another 26 percent say the lack of national coverage is because this is a local crime story, while 17 percent blame it on the gruesomeness of the story’s details.

The Fox poll finds that only about a third of voters say they are familiar with the Gosnell story (11 percent say “very” and 21 percent “somewhat” familiar). Most voters — 68 percent — are unfamiliar with it.

Seventy-two members of Congress signed three separate letters to network news executives last Thursday expressing their displeasure with the lack of news coverage and demanding the networks report on the story.

Among just those who are familiar, over half — 57 percent — think the reason the story hasn’t received more attention is media bias. The remaining views are split between the details being too horrific (18 percent) and it not being a national story (16 percent).

Pro-life respondents (42 percent) are twice as likely as those who are pro-choice (22 percent) to be familiar with the Gosnell case. Likewise, nearly twice as many Republicans (43 percent) as Democrats (22 percent) say they know about it.

The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,009 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 20 to April 22. The full poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.