{"id":330842,"date":"2025-05-06T17:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T22:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=330842"},"modified":"2025-07-15T21:00:59","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T02:00:59","slug":"propublicas-pulitzer-award-poor-journalism-preferred-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/propublicas-pulitzer-award-poor-journalism-preferred-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"ProPublica’s Pulitzer award proves that poor journalism can win if it has the preferred agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Pulitzer Prizes for 2025 have been announced<\/a>, and ProPublica is one of the recipients for their series of pro-abortion articles which blame women’s deaths on state laws protecting preborn children. Awarded by Columbia University, the Pulitzer is considered one of the highest honors in journalism, and ProPublica won the award in the “public service<\/a>” category.<\/p>\n

ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother<\/a>” series was highly applauded by pro-abortion mainstream media, and its anecdotal reports were spread widely by abortion activists who claimed the narratives were proof that pro-life laws harm women. Though there are exceptions in every single state allowing for medical intervention when a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, ProPublica’s series argued that these exceptions are too vague, leading to needless deaths.<\/p>\n

Live Action News fact-checked<\/a> most of these articles, finding ProPublica’s research to be deceptive, misleading, poorly executed, and clearly biased.<\/p>\n

After the news outlet’s first two reports, some things became clear about ProPublica’s reporting: ProPublica writers and researchers were intentionally choosing only<\/em> to search for maternal deaths and injuries in states with pro-life laws<\/em>, and then dishonestly reported those cases as the fault of pro-life laws regardless of the evidence pointing to another cause<\/em>, such as medical malpractice (which is not limited to pro-life states).<\/p>\n

A sampling of what we found<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Sloppy lies about Georgia’s law<\/strong><\/h4>\n

From ProPublica’s very first article, which discussed the death of Georgia mother Amber Thurman<\/strong>, who had taken the abortion pill to abort her twins, things went awry. In analyzing that article, Live Action News found<\/a> ProPublica did not report accurately about the state’s pro-life law, nor was the outlet forthright about some important details:<\/p>\n

1. D&Cs are\u00a0not\u00a0illegal<\/strong> in Georgia unless used to\u00a0intentionally kill\u00a0a child in the womb.<\/em>
\n2. Sepsis is a known risk of the abortion pill, which has a black box warning, despite claims that it is \u201csafer than Tylenol.\u201d<\/em>
\n3. ProPublica\u2019s blaming of the pro-life law is speculation; the doctors never explained why a D&C was not performed quickly.<\/em><\/p>\n

ProPublica claimed that Georgia law “prohibits doctors from using any instrument ‘with the purpose of terminating a pregnancy.'” We showed this claim to be false simply by quoting from the law itself, which says a criminal abortion is done “with intent to produce a miscarriage or abortion<\/b>,” defining<\/a> “abortion” as “\u2026 the act of using, prescribing, or administering any instrument, substance, device, or other means with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy with knowledge that termination will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of an unborn child<\/u><\/b>.”<\/p>\n

Yet ProPublica claimed that Georgia had \u201cmade performing [a D&C] procedure a felony, with few exceptions.\u201d This is false<\/em> and an example of extremely<\/em>\u00a0poor journalism<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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1. An abortion pill kills Amber Nicole Thurman<\/p>\n

2. ProPublica blames her death on state abortion laws instead<\/p>\n

3. ProPublica wins a Pulitzer for lying pic.twitter.com\/Nl6Wr6vkjE<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 John Hasson (@SonofHas) May 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n