“Balance” in the Assisted Suicide Debate

The Canadian television show, “The Verdict” which featured my good friend, Mark Pickup in the third segment, is so typical of the pro assisted suicide public affairs media explorations of the issue. First, notice how the question is posed:

Are Canadian laws robbing people of the right to choose the time and place of their passing?

Second, the balance of the show was completely skewed—three against one in Mark’s segment, four if you include the moderator who asked no tough questions of the pro side and clearly rooted for assisted suicide. Third, in Mark’s segment, the conversation focused on one case of a woman who committed suicide because she was in excruciating pain, without addressing why she was allowed to be in such pain. Fourth, most assisted suicides aren’t about people being in pain that cannot be controlled—that is just the way it is sold.

Mark did a good job. I have been in his shoes and it isn’t easy to speak in the situation where family members who want to go the other way are also arguing. But that is what the media thinks of as balance.

In the last segment, it was two for and one against assisted suicide, and one clueless commentator even said there were no abuses in Holland! It then descended into raw emotionalism, ideological assertions, claims that only religion is the basis for opposition, with few accurate facts. No detailed discussion of hospice. No promotion of suicide prevention, etc..

So typical of the MSM on this issue: Ignorant. Biased. Skewed. With the moderator, one Paula Todd, clearly rooting for one side, as her final emotional commentary made clear, in one of the most astonishing assertions of radical individualism I have ever seen: “If death is so important, why leave it to the amateurs?” Sickening, really.