We Should Live - Ben Bateman

Bashing the mainstream media for its inaccuracies and left-wing bias has become so easy that there’s hardly much sport in it. But this case is so tidy that it deserves mention:

On April 9, 2006, the New York Times magazine published a long piece about how abortion is illegal in El Salvador. It’s the puffy, emotionally driven type of story that still passes for news, especially among the older generations. On the last page of that story the author interviews Carmen Climaco, whom the author concludes was sentenced to 30 years in prison for having an abortion. The article implies that the case would likely have been dismissed had the judge known about an alleged rule of thumb among prosecutors that any baby over a pound was arguably viable.

You have to read that last page closely to get some idea of an alternative viewpoint:

“I stood up and it felt like something fell out of me.” It took her a while to understand just what had happened. “I put my hand on its throat to see if it was moving,” she said, “which is why my fingerprints were found on its neck.” . . .

She has compressed her story into a dense, simple tale of innocence — she just woke up covered in blood — to hold up against the public accusation of baby-strangling.

The author hopes that we will share his prejudice against prosecutors and assume this to be an obvious case of anti-abortion fanatics run amok. But reality is always more complicated than ideologically driven fairly tales.

Now we know more about Carmen Climaco, no thanks to the New York Times. LifeSiteNews obtained court records in the case and uncovered a tale that makes far more sense. Authorities found Ms. Clamaco’s baby hidden under her bed, in a box wrapped in bags. The court’s decision, in Spanish, is available here. I know just enough Spanish to pick out some pieces of it.

The key witness was Dr. Alfredo Eduardo Escobar Abarca, who notes that: 1) the infant appeared to have gestated to full term, 2) it had severe hemorrhaging around its neck consistent with strangulation, which could not have been caused by the normal traumas of childbirth, and 3) two different tests confirmed that the baby had air in its lungs when it died, meaning that it had taken its first breath.

LifeSiteNews also noted that Mr. Hitt’s main source of information for the story was Ipas, a charity/company that sells abortion equipment. Ipas apparently went so far as to launch a campaign to free Ms. Climaco, though it has since withdrawn that page from its web site.

So far it’s just another day of dishonest reporting from the MSM. But the story’s real shocker is an admission from the NYT’s ombudsman, Byron Calame, that the portion of the story about Ms. Climaco was patently false, and that Mr. Hitt had relied on a translator who worked for Ipas, which then used the NYT story to seek donations. All the facts are there, though the conclusion is more tepid than we on the right would wish: “Accuracy and fairness were not pursued with the vigor Times readers have a right to expect.” Blogger See-Dubya analyses Mr. Calame’s article here, and emphasises that the NYT arrogantly dismissed complaints about the article before it had even received an English translation of the key court ruling. In fact, the NYT still refuses to retract the story, apologize, or even admit the error.

Michelle Malkin summarizes the whole mess in her JWR column, and via video here on Hot Air. And today she reports that Mr. Calame’s position is likely to be terminated. See, when government employees sacrifice national security to settle their petty scores, the drive-by media calls them heroic whistleblowers. But report on the drive-by media’s own ideologically driven mistakes, and they fire you.

Update:

Dawn Eden has also posted on this story, and generated a lively discussion in which I’m participating.