sarah kliff

Turns out all the Planned Parenthood “sting” videos were deceptively edited. Will some mainstream reporters who legitimized the story care?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

I Love Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood isn’t taking the bogus “sells baby parts!” attacks on them sitting down, and commissioned an independent expert to analyze the supposed full video footage released by the fake Center for Medical Progress outfit.

Per Sarah Kliff of Vox.com:

Planned Parenthood hired a forensic research firm to analyze about 12 hours of footage that the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) secretly taped when it had actors pose as employees of a fetal tissue procurement company.

“This analysis did not reveal widespread evidence of substantive video manipulation, but we did identify cuts, skips, missing tape, and changes in camera angle,” the report from Fusion GPS, the firm that Planned Parenthood hired, concludes.

CMP took no steps to hide the fact that it edited its shorter, more widely viewed clips of undercover meetings with Planned Parenthood. The group interspersed news clips and overlaid text on top of the video; there’s clear evidence of production work.

But the group held that these “full footage” tapes were complete, unbiased presentations of its Planned Parenthood meetings. If CMP also edited these “full” tapes — ones that it told viewers were complete footage — then the group is guilty of deceiving the public the exact same way it deceived Planned Parenthood.

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The centrist fantasy on abortion rights is a dangerous farce

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The folks at Vox commissioned a poll on attitudes toward abortion, asking more nuanced, and specific, questions than are usually asked and the results are fascinating.

Vox’s Sarah Kliff was intrigued enough about the responses that she contacted some of the respondents for further clarification.

“From my point of view, I believe all babies go to heaven,” King told me when I asked him to explain how both labels fit his viewpoint. “And if this baby were to live a life where it would be abused … it’s just really hard to explain. It gets into the rights of the woman, and her body, at the same time. It just sometimes gets really hazy on each side.”

King’s perspective is, in a way, unique: he has a distinct and nuanced view on when abortion should and shouldn’t be legal, one that takes in all sorts of personal and circumstantial factors. He’s generally anti-abortion, but not completely. He doesn’t fit neatly into either side of the debate.

In another way, though, King’s viewpoint is common: in our poll, we found that 18 percent of Americans, like King, pick “both” when you ask them to choose between pro-life and pro-choice. Another 21 percent choose neither. Taken together, about four in 10 Americans are eschewing the labels that we typically see as defining the abortion policy debate.

Vox also asked some people on the street how they felt about abortion:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssSIUVPjDns&w=500&h=356] Link, in case video didn’t embed

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