Tim Carney: Media Reluctant to Note Chinese Dissident Chen Is Protesting Abortions, Sterilization

April 30th, 2012 11:29 AM

Tim Carney has an excellent post this morning at the Washington Examiner about how the media are reluctant to note the reason that Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng -- who is believed , but not confirmed, to be in hiding in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing -- is in hot water with the Communist government. Chen "has exposed the horrors of China’s one-child policy, including forced abortions and forced sterilizations," Carney noted.

Yet that fact was curiously missing from today's "1300-word Washington Post story." Indeed, "Of the five Post news articles I found discussing Chen, only one of them has the word 'abortion,'" Carney noticed. And the Post isn't alone in its bias by omission:

CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell doesn’t mention abortion, sterilization, or the one-child policy at all.

Others simply buried this detail, making sure to describe Chen generically as a “legal activist”

Reuters, in the 13th paragraph, mentions that Chen “campaigned against abortions forced under China's ‘one child’ policy.”

For the full story click here. You can read more of Carney's work here.