Statistics
Apr
13
It’s Columbine Season-Media Bias Reigns
April 13, 2009 | Tagged Culture War, futility of gun control, Media Bias, Second Amendment | Leave a Comment
It’s that time of year again. On 04-12-09, the CBS “news” program, “60 Minutes,” aired a segment on the (Gasp!) increased number of gun purchases in the U.S. Of course, the “unbiased” “news” report managed to get in information about the Virginia Tech Massacre, recent police shootings, as well as the alleged link between U.S. gun sales and Mexican violence. (See my posts on Mexico under the Category: “Foreign Gun Laws.”)
The CBS hit piece on Americans’ right to self-defense from crime, tyranny and genocide apparently followed an NBC attack on 04-10-09. We can expect an increasingly shrill crescendo of anti-Second Amendment rhetoric until at least after the anniversary of the Columbine killings. There may be anti-NRA demonstrations at the Phoenix convention in May.
Why do I say that the CBS piece was biased? Let’s look first at the timing of the piece to fit in with the annual, anti-gun rights, spring barrage. The annual Columbine mourning and the upcoming annual NRA Convention provide ample targets for this sort of propaganda.
Next, let’s look at the structure of the segment. It was a typical “advocacy journalism” set up. The story opened with the implication that guns cause mass murders and that people buying guns is not a good thing. The producers bring on a “straw man,” in this case the head of a Virginia gun rights organization. Then, the presentation closes with a sound bite from anti-gun California Senator, Diane Feinstein, intimately associated with the first ban on semi-automatic firearms during the Clinton Administration.
You will notice that the pro gun-control side of the argument got the first and last slots in the segment. It was designed this way, so viewers will tend to remember the anti-gun message. The pro-gun rights “straw man” was “rebutted” by the closing arguments.
The “straw man” did mention that just one legally-armed student might have aborted the Virginia Tech Killings, which occurred in a “gun free criminal safe free fire zone.” However, that statement was effectively drowned in the much more extensive coverage given to the anti-gun side of the argument.
Keep in mind that the producers controlled every minute aspect of this “news” report. They just “happened,” to photograph some Nazi swastika flags at the gun show during the interview with the “straw man.” These flags are normally displayed in conjunction with displays offering collections of war trophy Nazi memorabilia. The casual observer of the “news” story probably wouldn’t know this, nor even consciously be aware that he or she was being led to associate the flags with the “straw man.” Get it! “Gun shows and gun rights are tied to Nazism!” Excellent job of unconscious psychological persuasion! Pavlov, not to mention Lenin, would be proud.
Let’s look at the advocates for the various sides in this “news” story. There was one pro-individual rights advocate interviewed. There were five pro-gun control viewpoints presented, including interviews with a wounded Virginia Tech student, the relative of a person killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre, an anti-gun law enforcement representative, and Diane Feinstein. Illinois anti-gun Senator Dick Durbin got in his two cents for “sensible gun laws” in a sound bite. Five to one aren’t bad odds in a “news” story?
You will note that there were no persons interviewed or quoted who had employed firearms for self-defense, even though Dr. Gary Kleck estimates that up to 2.5 million defensive uses of guns occur every year. You wouldn’t know it from this report.
Language is also telling. The report misidentified semi-automatic, or self-loading firearms, as “assault weapons.” ”Assaults” are bad things, right? By pejorative labeling of commonly owned guns, the producers can shape the perceptions of viewers in the desired direction.
Real “assault weapons” are capable of fully automatic fire. The guns shown in the news story are not. You have to pull the trigger every time to fire a round from a self-loading firearm. With a full-auto weapon, you pull the trigger and the gun will fire multiple rounds. Advocates for more gun control typically deliberately blur this distinction.
In the segment, advocates for individual rights were called “The Gun Lobby,” which has a “stranglehold” on Congress. Private sales of firearms at gun shows without background checks are referred to as “The Gun Show Loophole.” (Ooh! Doesn’t that make you want to close that pesky “loophole,” register all gun sales, and force those nasty “gun lobby stranglers” back under the rocks from which they crawled?)
Never fear! Even though the police are currently “outgunned” by drug dealers and gang bangers armed with their “gun of choice,” the “assault weapon,” Diane Feinstein will pick the time and place to push her gun control legislation and save us all from ourselves.
It’s extremely interesting to me that criminals and gangs didn’t seem to have a lot of interest in semi-automatic rifles, until the news media began hyping the idea that self-loading firearms were “guns of choice.” I suppose the media had to point out to the gangsters what guns they should be using.
According to the CBS report, a recent poll indicated that “only” 49% of Americans currently favor stricter gun control laws. After a few weeks of this kind of “news” reporting, the numbers will probably rise.
Now, I don’t object to the fact that CBS and “60 Minutes” producers have opinions on the issue of gun control. I would just like them to express their opinions as opinions, and stop calling them “news.” I would also like Mainstream Media pundits to clean up their language on the debate and stop trying to shape public opinion against gun owners. Silly me! That’s what advocacy journalism does! They have to make the world a ” better place”, a place like Chicago, or Oakland. (See my posts under the Category: “Gun Law Failures.”)
Def Mech