CNS News’ Sam Dorman peppered House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Thursday afternoon with several questions about abortion, and a few unimpressed reporters responded quickly by accusing him of being a conservative activist or just some protester.
“A conservative journo asked Pelosi [about] what constitutes a baby being alive,” MSNBC’s Luke Russert tweeted, making an assumption about Dorman’s political affiliations.
The Washington Post’s Kelsey Snell took it a step further, and initially identified Dorman in an article as a pro-life “protester.” The Post has since updated its story to reflect that Dorman is, in fact, a reporter.
CNS News is indeed a conservative media group. However, neither Russert nor Snell knew of Dorman’s employer, or what his name even was, when they commented on his exchange with Pelosi. And yet, without full knowledge of the siutaition, each responded exactly the same to Dorman’s line of inquiry: By accusing him of being either a conservative or just some anonymous protester.
Dorman asked Pelosi, “Is an unborn baby with a human heart and human liver a human being?”
“Why don’t you take your ideological questions … I don’t know who you are, and you’re welcome to be here and freedom of this press,” the California congresswoman responded.
The CNS reporter continued, pressing Pelosi to explain “what species” is a fetus.
“I am a devout, practicing Catholic. A mother of five children. When my baby was born, my first child, my oldest child, was six years old. I think I know more about this subject than you, with all due respect,” she said.
Pelosi’s non-answer comes at a time when Republican and Democratic lawmakers are battling over whether Planned Parenthood should be stripped of its federal funding. Democrats, most especially Pelosi, have vigorously opposed all such efforts.
This isn’t the first time that reporters have moved to delegitimize tough abortion questions for the California congresswoman. In 2013, the New York Times’ Jeremy Peters laughed down the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack for questioning Pelosi on her unwavering support for abortion.
In response to being accused Friday of intentionally disrupting reporters’ abortion inquiries so as to help Pelosi dodge questions, Peters said, “Was hardly laughing to ‘help’ Pelosi.”
“Laughter was at ‘reporter’ who was using his question to advocate,” he added, making sure to use quotes to delegitimize McCormack.
