Posted on Sep 29, 2006 | by Michael Foust

NEW YORK (BP)--A New York Times reporter who writes frequently about the Supreme Court and abortion is under fire for giving a speech in which she criticized the pro-life movement, religious conservatives and the Bush administration.

The speech by reporter Linda Greenhouse, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was given at Harvard University in June. National Public Radio reported about the controversy Sept. 26 and played clips from the speech.

While speaking at Harvard, Greenhouse referred to what she viewed as a "sustained assault on women's reproductive freedom and the hijacking of public policy by religious fundamentalism."

"To say that these last few years have been dispiriting is an understatement," she said.

She also said that since the 1960s, the United States has "turned its energy and attention away from upholding the rule of law and toward creating law-free zones at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Haditha and other places around the world -- [such as] the U.S. Congress."

Greenhouse's position on abortion has long been known. She marched in an abortion rights rally in 1989 -- a year in which she wrote more than 20 news articles about abortion, NPR reported. As The Times' Supreme Court reporter, she has covered the most significant abortion cases in recent years: Stenberg v. Carhart (2000), which overturned a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortion, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), which affirmed Roe v. Wade and upheld abortion rights.

She also has covered Supreme Court cases relating to public prayer, Ten Commandments displays and homosexual activism -- cases watched closely by Christian conservatives.

Just this year, she wrote about the Supreme Court ruling that limited the power of the Bush administration to hold military tribunals for terrorism suspects.

"Linda Greenhouse has, as this [NPR] story points out, a long history of using her platform as a journalist to promote her political and ideological agenda," Focus on the Family's Carrie Gordon Earll, who worked as a television reporter for 10 years, told Baptist Press. "She really gives a bad name to reporters."

Christians and pro-lifers should take Greenhouse's reporting "with a grain of salt," Earll said.

"Greenhouse's misuse of her profession -- and others who do that also -- created the environment in which alternative media, like Baptist Press, Focus on the Family and conservative talk radio, have flourished," Earll said. "... If Greenhouse wants to be an advocate, great, but let's put her on the editorial page and not the news page."

Contacted by NPR, Greenhouse responded, "I said what I said in a public place. Let the chips fall where they may."

Many other journalism experts say Greenhouse crossed a line normally forbidden.

"It's been a basic tenet of journalism ... that the reporter's ideology [has] to be suppressed and submerged, so the reader has absolute confidence that what he or she is reading is not colored by previous views," Daniel Okrent, a former public editor for The New York Times, told NPR.

Sandy Rowe, editor of The Oregonian, applauded Greenhouse's reporting but questioned her decision to give the speech.

"If she or any other reporter stakes out a strong position on an issue that is still evolving both in society and before the courts, yes, I think that is problematic," Rowe told NPR.

In November, the Supreme Court will hear another partial-birth abortion case -- one that could overturn the earlier Nebraska decision and this time uphold a ban on the gruesome abortion procedure. Greenhouse presumably will cover it.
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