Media Matters' Spin Machine Breaks

Remember Media Matters, the wannabe news “watchdog” website that breeds blog posts like cockroaches? They’re a very prolific sock-puppet for every group that is not pro-life-and about as teeming with simple, small, yet ever-multiplying dirty content as an unwashed sock, too. I am hesitant to address their latest articles about Live Action because I suspect it will be somewhat like fighting the Hydra of Greek mythology: I will cut off one head only to see it sprout two more in its place-which look exactly the same as the original, of course, but are just a little angrier.

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But here goes nothing.

Media Matters thinks Live Action’s new IN Medicaid video is a “hoax” because the video in fact:

has demonstrated that Planned Parenthood’s concerns – that women on Medicaid who rely on Planned Parenthood for preventive health care would lose that access under the Indiana law denying funds to Planned Parenthood – were accurate. [my emphasis]

By “that access,” Media Matters means “access to Planned Parenthood”:

To recap: Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards warned that women would not be able to go to Planned Parenthood for preventive care if they lost their funding. Rose claimed that she has “caught on tape” a Planned Parenthood worker in Indiana saying that because of the “new law,” a Medicaid recipient cannot get preventive care at Planned Parenthood. [my emphasis]

But Planned Parenthood’s argument against Indiana’s law is not simply that women would “lose their access to Planned Parenthood.” Planned Parenthood could probably get on fine with 9,300 less patients-but according to Planned Parenthood, those patients could not get on fine without Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood’s argument, given by Cecile Richards in a recent press release, is that Indiana’s law:

would have a devastating impact on women’s health and take away health care from thousands of women in Indiana, leaving them at greater risk for undetected cancers, untreated infections and unintended pregnancies. [my emphasis]

But in our investigation, Planned Parenthood Indiana clinics admit that Planned Parenthood is not the only option for healthcare that women on Medicaid have. Media Matters thinks the whole controversy about defunding Planned Parenthood is about a tautology, to wit: you can’t defund Planned Parenthood because then people can’t go to Planned Parenthood. In reality, the controversy is about whether or not Planned Parenthood is the only healthcare provider for women in need in Indiana-and the undercover tapes prove that they’re not.

Media Matters has so absurdly misunderstood the point of Live Action’s investigation it is hard to read with a straight face-and I wonder if the author could have written it with one. Apparently, we’ve gotten their spin machine spinning so fast it may have broken.