I try to avoid watching the early afternoon shows on MSNBC because the line up includes Andrea Mitchell, Chris Jansing, and Katy Tur. But I was waiting for the 4 P.M. Deadline White House to see the latest on the Ronna McDaniel farce, and I did watch Katy Tur’s interview with Erin Hawley, the lawyer representing the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine who want to end distribution of mifepristone as an abortion pill. There was just so much that could have been asked of Erin Hawley about this specious case before the SCOTUS, so I tuned in.
I found the interview to be weak tea at best. In other words, Tur phoned this one in. My own assessment was that Tur was excited to have Erin Hawley on and congratulated her twice for getting the opporutinity to argue this case before the SCOTUS. Then, Tur asked Hawley in almost a monotone voice why the “doctors” she represents simply cannot opt out of performing abortions?
Hawley filibustered about how unsafe mifepristone is, and she refused to answer the question directly. Tur repeated the question several more times, and Hawley was able to obfuscate about how doctors on call must deal with the medical emergencies created my mifepristone. In other words, they had no choice but to assist with a medical abortion when mifespristone sent a woman to the emergency room.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who thought, “Wait a minute! How safe is mifepristone? Should we be taking Hawley’s assertions as factual?” I’m no doctor, but I think I would have heard a whole bunch of horror stories about how unsafe mifepristone was by now. Well, I used the Google machine, and sure enough Hawley was lying about the incidences of serious side effects for mifepristone.
Don’t believe me. Look at what Media Matters has to say:
Hawley said that in emergency situations practitioners are not always able to opt out. After Tur repeatedly pressed her on the question, suggesting doctors could opt out in advance, Hawley reverted to fearmongering about the medicine, saying, “The FDA really was saying before the Supreme Court today that even acknowledging that one in 25 women go to the emergency room after taking mifepristone, that that didn’t matter.”
In fact, according to an amicus brief to the court, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical societies, hundreds of studies have proved mifepristone to be safe and effective.
The commonly used medication claims a 99.6% success rate, fewer than 0.5% of women experience “serious adverse reactions,” and the risk of death is “almost non-existent.” (The “one in 25” women in the ER claim is near the top end of a range of 2.9% to 4.6% from the FDA.) The FDA reports that only 32 women have died after taking mifepristone, and it is unclear if the drug is the cause of death in all of these instances.
The amicus brief states, “Few drugs have been so extensively studied after their approval by FDA and can boast such a clear and compelling record of safe use.”
Glad I am not insane. What we have here folks is another wonderful example of a reporter allowing a political extremist to throw out a series of lies without any pushback. AGAIN!
You can see the so called interview here.
Please bear with me while I get a bit “sexist,” but I would have thought that a woman reporter would do a better job on the issue of a woman’s reproductive health. And I saw such a difference with both the men and women reporters on the prime time shows on MSNBC on this very subject that it was like night and day. Both sexes by the way on the late afternoon and evening shows.
Once again, Tur confirms my worst suspicions about her.
Tur made her bones traveling around covering the Trump campaign back in 2016, but once she wrote a book about this and got her own show on MSNBC, Tur has decided to settle back and be very comfortable in her new position. And no way is she going to do anything to endanger her position.
The suits at NBC have made it abundantly clear that they want Republicans to show up on their news shows for interviews and be paid contributors. See the Ronna McDaniel debacle. While the other hosts on MSNBC will challenge obvious lies from the few Republicans who show up for interviews, Tur is not going to do that. She gives Republicans the kids gloves treatment because she wants them to show up again.
And no, this is not a one off for Tur. According to her latest book, Tur let loose on how bad the media has become since — drum roll please — since the 1960’s. What do I mean? Here is a sampling of what came out of her latest book, “Rough Draft”:
Quoting a biography of Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley, another pundit of uneven judgement, she endorses the absurd idea that CBS Evening News covered the civil rights movement of the 1960s too sympathetically – citing as evidence the fact that bigoted southern affiliates derided their New York parent as the “Colored Broadcasting Station.”
Tur also thinks it was wrong for the CBS Evening News to devote two thirds of its broadcast to Watergate two days before the 1972 election, when the New York Times and every major organization except the Washington Post was ignoring the scandal.
She disputes Cronkite’s 1968 description of Chicago police under Mayor Richard Daley as a “bunch of thugs”, a description delivered when the Connecticut senator Abraham Ribicoff was accurately accusing Daley of using “Gestapo tactics” against leftwing protesters.
Tur even questions Cronkite’s single finest moment, also in ’68, when he accurately identified Vietnam as a “stalemate” after the Tet offensive.
Letting your inner Republican out Katy? I don’t know about you, but I found this not only arrogant but appalling.
Anyway, there was so much else that could have been covered with regards to this stupid case before the SCOTUS, and many of the legal analysts on MSNBC used that very word to describe Hawley’s case. But Tur just couldn’t be bothered to do her job. Ask a question about standing only, and let the other lies flow.