The Media Research Center’s Kyle Drennen complained in a May 22 post:
During a report on Wednesday’s Today show promoting “protests from coast to coast” against pro-life legislation in various states, NBC reporter Stephanie Gosk fretted over such a measure being considered in Louisiana. She noted how “calls from patients have spiked” at a New Orleans abortion clinic and ironically asked a member of the clinic’s staff if a “violent act” had ever occurred at the facility.
[…]After Caldwell described seeing “protesters almost every day” outside the clinic, Gosk assumed the pro-life demonstrators were dangerous: “Has there ever been any violent act? Any attack on your clinic?” Caldwell claimed: “Absolutely, and on clinic staff.”
Apparently it was missed on Gosk that abortions themselves are acts of violence.
Note how Drennen frames reporting on protests against “pro-life legislation” — euphemistic terminology instead of the more accurate “anti-abortion” — as “promoting” the protests. That’s what we call the depiction-equals-approval fallacy, a longtime MRC staple.
Note, too, how Drennen quickly deflects away from anti-abortion activists committing violence to claiming that the REAL violence is going on inside the clinic — perhaps as a justification for anti-abortion violence.
Of course, this sort of deflection is part of the right-wing anti-abortion playbook. When a man shot and killed three people inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015, the MRC’s “news” division, CNSNews.com, immediately portrayed the man as mentally ill and not part of the anti-abortion movement (even though the killings advance the movement’s goals and was clearly inflamed by anti-abortion rhetoric). The MRC proper did the same thing.