LEGITIMATING MURDER?

• Date: 20 December 2000
• Published date: 20 December 2000
• Pages: 169-189
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2000)0000002011
• Author: Morgan Blake Ward Doran,Gray Cavender

LEGITIMATING MURDER? AN

ANALYSIS OF NEWSPAPER

COVERAGE OF VIOLENCE AT

ABORTION CLINICS

Morgan Blake Ward Doran and Gray Cavender

ABSTRACT

Since 1993, extremists have murdered five individuals linked to the

abortion profession: Dr. David Gunn, Dr. Bayard Britton, Lieutenant

Colonel James H. Barrett, Ms. Shannon Lowney, and Ms. Leanne Nichols.

Other victims have been wounded. We analyze the content of 151 articles

from The New York Times,The Los Angeles Times, and USA Today

subsequent to each incident. Because these crimes satisfy multiple

dimensions of newsworthiness, coverage of the ‘abortion violence’ has

been extensive. However, in contrast to traditional crime coverage that

condemns the crime and the criminal, the newspapers depicted these

incidents as part of an ongoing political debate. To understand why these

crimes were covered in this manner, we draw on the literature that deals

with media frames.

INTRODUCTION

On March 9, 1993, Dr. David Gunn was shot to death outside his Pensacola,

Florida clinic by an anti-abortion extremist. Dr. Gunn was murdered because he

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 2, pages 169–189.

Copyright © 2000 by Elsevier Science Inc.

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ISBN: 0-7623-0680-7

169

performed abortions. Since then, Dr. John B. Britton, Lt. Col. James Herman

Barrett, Shannon Lowney and Leanne Nichols have also been murdered. Dr.

George Tiller, Ms. June Barrett, and other victims have been wounded.

Public understanding of these events is, in large part, informed by their

representation in the news media. Indeed, media coverage of what have been

called ‘the abortion killings’ or ‘the abortion violence’ has been extensive. This

is not surprising given the media’s affinity for violence and especially murder

(Chermak 1995; Lotz, 1992). Media coverage of crime and violence has

become so pervasive as to constitute a predominant theme in journalism

(Altheide, 1997, p. 648). In addition to their inherently violent nature, the

abortion killings possess other characteristics coveted by the news media:

political protest, moral dilemma, and social controversy (Yale, 1993). These

provocative attributes, coupled with the dramatic nature of the events and their

connection to the contentious issue of abortion, made the abortion killings

newsworthy.

Because murder is so sensational, media coverage of such crimes is usually

intense. Murder stories, responding to the public injustice of the act, invoke

formats that condemn the crime and the criminal. Crime news is predicated

upon an almost Durkheimian (1964) sense of crime as a social wrong (Ericson

et al., 1991). This Durkheimian penchant is so fundamental that the

condemnatory nature of crime news is not seen as a challenge to journalistic

notions of objectivity.

Nevertheless, some scholars characterize crime coverage as overly-simplistic

(Ericson et al., 1991). Crime news emphasizes the sensational event and the

individual responsible for it and de-emphasizes the social context in which the

act and the actor exist (Ericson et al., 1991, p. 8). The focus of this criticism is

not so much the lack of balance in coverage, but rather the degree to which

crime news de-politicizes criminal events.

In contrast, in the case of the abortion killings, media coverage did

emphasize the crimes’ context: the political debate over abortion. The abortion

controversy has been increasingly newsworthy over the past ten years; media

coverage has focused on the pro-life and pro-choice debate (Grindstaff, 1994).

However, a focus on political debates in stories about violence at clinics

potentially shifts attention away from the criminal dimension of the violence.

The newspapers could have covered the abortion violence in several ways.

We argue that the newspapers invoked a frame that resembled political news

more than crime news. To understand why the abortion violence was covered

in this manner and to assess the implications of such coverage, we draw on the

literature that deals with media frames, and with how social movements seek

to influence the media.

170 MORGAN BLAKE WARD DORAN & GRAY CAVENDER