In a recent interview, CNN’s Brian Stelter asked former CBS “abortion access” reporter Kate Smith — who recently announced that she’s joining the staff of Planned Parenthood — about my previous criticism of her work.
In April 2020, I surveyed Smith’s supposed “reporting,” criticized her kid-glove treatment of abortion groups and her parroting of pro-abortion talking points, and described her as “Planned Parenthood’s ambassador to CBS News.”
Now, a mere two years later, Smith is joining Planned Parenthood as the group’s first-ever “senior director of news content.” My evaluation, it seems, was almost too on the nose. But Smith told Stelter she “completely rejects that criticism,” suggesting that I “don’t understand how newsrooms actually work.”
“Look, if you’re a blogger online,” Smith told Stelter, “you might not realize all of the different layers that someone goes through before they publish a piece or go on air. We have standards. We have lawyers. Before anything goes on air, there’s been a thorough review of what’s been going on. So I stand by every article I write.”
Then, she seemed to chide Stelter, “Making that accusation, you’re playing into the right. Anyone who isn’t anti-abortion is against them. If you’re trying to cover this from a neutral point of view and you’re including both sides, they automatically think you’re against them, because they view doctors as for abortion and view them as biased, even though these are doctors we’re talking about. I really reject all of that criticism. Again, I think these people just don’t understand how newsrooms actually work. They don’t have that kind of experience. But yeah, completely reject that criticism.”
Even apart from this nearly unintelligible red herring about “doctors,” Smith’s reply is total nonsense. Rather than respond to the substance of my criticism, she touts her supposed authority as someone who has worked in a newsroom and dismisses me as a “blogger.”
Everyone at NR knows how newsrooms actually work, and how they’re supposed to — that’s exactly why I criticized Smith’s work in the first place. (And by the way, that aforementioned link goes to an appeal from Rich Lowry for our NRPlus subscription drive, to help us continue to keep a check on the rest of the media and do other important work; in return for signing up at a special rate, you’ll get full access to all our digital articles and posts, among other benefits.)
In the piece Stelter referenced, I observed the following:
[Smith] was the first to report that a “coalition of abortion rights groups” had responded to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in favor of Texas’s COVID-19 abortion restrictions. Her article noted that Texas was restricting “abortion access” and exclusively quoted pro-abortion activists, one from the Center for Reproductive Rights and one from NARAL Pro-Choice Texas.
So much for “including both sides.”
I also pointed out:
Smith’s Twitter account routinely hosts insinuations masquerading as facts — “Restrictions on abortion always disproportionately impact people of color” — and solicitations of sources who will substantiate the pro-abortion argument she’s already decided to make: “Are you a patient in Texas seeking an abortion but can’t get one because of the state’s ban? Please reach out to me, I would love to speak with you. State officials in Texas have told me that people **aren’t** traveling out-of-state to get abortions, but I know that’s not true.”
These are not the comments or queries of someone looking to report about both sides of the abortion debate. They’re comments and queries from someone with an obvious preference for legal abortion and an agenda that fuels her “reporting.”
And I noted:
When Alexis McGill Johnson became acting president of Planned Parenthood [in summer 2019], her first public interview went to — who else? — Kate Smith, who opened their conversation with a broad smile and a hearty, “Congratulations on the new job!” Smith went on to pose such probing questions as “How did you first get involved with Planned Parenthood?” and “There are a lot of different ways that you can get involved with health-care access, especially for women of color, and especially low-income women. Why Planned Parenthood?”
These are not the kinds of questions that a hard-nosed, unbiased reporter poses to the president of a major political-advocacy organization. They’re softball questions from a Planned Parenthood fan. And, as it turns out, they were also questions from a future employee.
I may never have been in a CBS newsroom or worked with “lawyers” like Smith has, but even this “blogger online” knows biased pro-abortion “reporting” when she sees it — and Smith has no defense for it.