Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote a piece called “Planned Parenthood’s Ambassador to CBS News,” in which I critiqued the work of Kate Smith, then a self-styled “reporter covering abortion access” at CBS. A bit of what I said in the piece:
Smith, a correspondent at CBS News, claims to be a reporter. She is employed not by an opinion journal but by CBS News, one of the “Big Three” broadcast television networks and a prominent mainstream journalistic outfit. You could be forgiven for believing that CBS might employ a reporter to cover abortion policy. After all, it’s a topic that requires journalistic skill and nuance. It’s one of the most hotly debated political issues in American public life, a question on which Americans have been harshly split for decades. It deserves reporting that reflects both this intense, deeply rooted polarization and the complexity and moral gravity of the subject.
But if you believe that’s what CBS is doing in employing Smith, you’d be wrong. Kate Smith is not a reporter at all. She is an advocate for abortion rights who exploits her perch at CBS to disguise as fact the opinions of the country’s most radical abortion-rights activists. She is Planned Parenthood’s ambassador to CBS, posing as a reporter and constructing articles that more closely resemble press releases for the nation’s most powerful abortion-rights advocacy groups. She has traded her objectivity for access to these organizations, offering them the kid-glove treatment so they will permit her to be the first to publicize their PR campaigns, interview their leaders, and scoop their briefs in court cases.
A little while back, Smith left CBS to work in comms at a New York City restaurant. Today, she announced that she’s . . . joining the staff of Planned Parenthood! She’ll be Planned Parenthood’s first-ever “senior director of news content.” Her time flacking for abortion-advocacy groups under the guise of straight reporting will have prepared her well for her new role.