Thanks to Henry Hanks for pointing out this LA Times memo about a recent front page story that newspaper did on claims that having an abortion increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer.
Assuming its genuine, the irony here is that the claim that having an abortion increases the risk of breast cancer has been debunked six ways from Sunday. But newspapers like the Times resort to personality smears and other tactics instead of simply presenting the science (probably in part because understanding and writing about the science is hard, but understanding and writing about the political aspect of the debate is easy).
By going with such cheap shots, the Times and other newspapers give the opposite impression — that the science is on the side of the anti-abortion advocates and so a liberal paper like the Times has to avoid talking about it at all costs.
It’s a shame that ideological writing these days generally entails such distortions and gimmicks. It is certainly possible to be strongly pro- or anti-abortion and yet still fairly present the views of the other side — but you wouldn’t know it from reading papers like the Los Angelos or New York Times.