Michelle Malkin takes on Michael Schiavo and the MSM

In what I think is one of her best columns ever, Michelle Malkin takes on both the mainstream media's abysmal and false coverage of the Schiavo matter, which includes its burial of Michael Schiavo's at times shameful conduct. Despite being used to the MSM's shoddy reporting, I was still shocked by the twisted polls taken, and the trumpeting of their inevitably false results:

On a fundamental matter of life and death, the MSM heavyweights have proven themselves utterly incapable of reporting fairly. Take a widely-publicized ABC News poll released on Monday that supposedly showed strong public opposition to any Washington intervention in Terri's case. Here is how the spinmasters framed the main poll question: "As you may know, a woman in Florida named Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her parents and her husband disagree on whether or not she should be kept on life support. In cases like this who do you think should have final say, (the parents) or (the spouse)?" A follow-up questions asked: "If you were in this condition, would you want to be kept alive, or not?" The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never been on "life support." The loaded phrase evokes images of a comatose patient being artificially sustained by myriad machines and pumps and wires. Terri was on a feeding tube. A feeding tube is not a ventilator. Terri can breathe just fine on her own. And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow on her own as well. She is disabled, not dead. But ABC News did not see fit to inform either the poll takers or its viewers of the truth. Instead, it misled them—and the result was a poll response that produced—voila!—"broad public disapproval" for any government intervention to spare Terri from slowly starving to death. Blogger Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters (captainsquartersblog.com) noted: "Either ABC is completely incompetent in conducting research, or they have attempted to fool their viewers and readership with false polling that essentially lies about the case in question. Since when does ABC conduct push polling for euthanasia?"

What you're not reading the MSM, which adores the term "persistent vegetative state" is that Terri Schiavo in fact is just extremely handicapped, and that Michael Schiavo is getting irked at her tenacity in clinging to life:

Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill. Not in excruciating pain. Capable of saying "Mommy" and "Help me." And of "getting the feeling she's falling" or getting "excited," in her husband's own testimony, when her head is not held properly. Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had informed participants that in a sworn affidavit, registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who worked at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Fla., while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified: "Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that bitch gonna die?'"

This whole thing is disgusting. And the MSM is slowly, inexorably, getting its way. Two days ago, in a conversation with an elderly friend, my friend was agreeing that Schiavo was being murdered. Yesterday, after watching ABC news, she announced to me that it is disgraceful that the President would interfere to keep this brain dead woman alive. This is an intelligent, compassionate woman, and yet she succumbed without a murmur to the pro-death drumbeat being sounded over the MSM airwaves.