PHILADELPHIA — Through four weeks, prosecutors have laid out evidence against Dr. Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion provider on trial on charges of killing seven viable fetuses by "snipping" their necks with scissors and of causing the death of a pregnant 41-year-old woman during a procedure.
The grisly details drew mainly local attention. But after an online furor that the case was being ignored by the national news media because of troubling accounts of late-term abortions, reporters from major newspapers and television networks descended Monday on the Court of Common Pleas. It was the latest example of the power of social media to drive a wide debate, similar to the attention paid to a rape trial last month in Steubenville, Ohio, that resulted in the conviction of two teenage football players.
Reporters heard testimony from the Philadelphia medical examiner about unsanitary, even filthy conditions at Dr. Gosnell's clinic, from which the remains of 47 fetuses were removed, some in a water jug, a juice carton and a pet-food container.
In earlier testimony, according to several news reports, an unlicensed doctor said that Dr. Gosnell, 72, showed him how to cut the necks of babies born alive to make sure they died, and a young woman who worked at the clinic as a teenager said she assisted in abortions in which she saw at least five babies moving and breathing.
Dr. Gosnell's lawyer, Jack McMahon, maintains that there were no live births, and that the patient who died, who had an abortion in her 19th week of pregnancy, had unforeseen complications.
Eight workers at Dr. Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic have pleaded guilty in the case, including three to third-degree murder. If convicted, Dr. Gosnell could face the death penalty.
In recent days, the case has become a political cause célèbre, kicked off by a commentator for Fox News, Kirsten Powers, who wrote in USA Today that "when Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke," a pro-contraception activist, "there was nonstop media hysteria," but in the case of Dr. Gosnell, there was only a "deafening silence" that was disgraceful.
Ms. Powers's complaint was picked up by others, including some who suggested the mainstream media had ignored the story because, as Jeffrey Goldberg put it in Bloomberg View, it "upsets a particular narrative about the reality of certain types of abortion, and that reality isn't something some pro-choice absolutists want to discuss."
On Twitter, conservatives began a campaign to prod more coverage. Mollie Hemingway, a columnist for Christianity Today, asked individual health journalists directly why they were ignoring the story.
Politicians also weighed in. Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and 2016 presidential hopeful, wrote on Twitter, "Media's forgotten what belongs on page 1."
But others noted there had been scant coverage in conservative news outlets. Kevin Drum, a political blogger for Mother Jones, pointed out that one conservative paper, The Washington Times, had published one wire-service article about the trial and seven stories "complaining that other media outlets aren't covering the trial."
Kelly McBride, an expert on media ethics at the Poynter Institute, said she saw no evidence of any cover-up, simply confusion by news editors over whether the story merited national attention. "One of the ways the news media knows how to cover a story these days is because of the attention in social media," Ms. McBride said. "That's how people judge whether there's an appetite for a story."
Martin Baron, the executive editor of The Washington Post, told a reporter from his paper writing about the controversy that he simply had not known of the story until readers e-mailed him last week. "I wish I could be conscious of all stories everywhere, but I can't be," he said. "We never decide what to cover for ideological reasons, no matter what critics might claim."
The New York Times, which covered the news of Dr. Gosnell's indictment in 2011, was one of the few national outlets to report on the opening of the trial March 18.
In any event, the coverage has arrived. CBS News reported on the trial Monday morning, as did the MSNBC show "Morning Joe." The Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle was in the courtroom on Monday for the first time, when Dr. Sam P. Gulino, chief medical examiner of Philadelphia, described examining 47 fetal remains that were taken from Dr. Gosnell's office. Some were in jars that contained severed feet.
Dr. Gulino estimated that two of the fetuses were older than 24 weeks, the limit for legal abortions in Pennsylvania. One, estimated to be 28 weeks old, he said, had a "defect" in the back of its neck, which in a photograph appeared to be an incision. Dr. Gulino said four sets of remains that he examined had similar defects.
Under cross-examination by Mr. McMahon, Dr. Gulino conceded he had no evidence that any remains he examined had been born alive. He said some had been frozen at the clinic, the defunct Women's Medical Society, and so evidence of whether they had been viable at delivery was harder to determine.
The trial is expected to last another month.
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