Abortion pictures fail to convert not because they're shocking or truthful, but because they anger and disgust people into ignoring the entire issue of abortion, an issue we should continually research and discuss. We can't understand how to peg abortion legally without first knowing what a fetus is . Most people have never seen one, and before we blithely assume the fetus has no right to life, it wouldn't hurt for our journalists to inform us about the occasional fetal foray into prenatal care units, biology labs, and operating rooms. But the tapping fingers at Fox saw only shock value in Drudge's request and refused it largely on that basis. A free press enjoys the first amendment not because journalists are generally good people who promise not to abuse it.
Abuse is an unfortunate given.
The freedoms and forces inherent in the system, the tension created by the diversity of journalistic research and viewpoints, allow a unique set of checks and balances preventing incorrect ideas from proliferating. It's freedom, not censorship, that kills bad ideas. If his charge of sublime inequity proved wrong, public discourse and debate, competing commentators, and our own good judgment should be called in for a verdict. Not the suits at Fox News. New ideas are troublesome as scalpels, slicing away at our comfortable conceptions about what's right, what's real and what's true.