Bartholomew Roberts
June 26, 2003, 09:58 AM
Just a thought; but I often see links here discussing thinly veiled propaganda attacks on the Second Amendment by major newspapers and TV.
One thing we need to remember about the Internet is that everything gets tracked. Do we want these media organizations, whose primary purpose is to seek attention and ratings, to note that slanted stories decrying gun ownership draw lots of visits and pageviews?
Or would we rather that they see that positive portrayals of gun ownership draw the most attention and ratings?
Everytime we click on or distribute a negative link, we send a Pavlovian message to encourage them to run more stories in that vein. Everytime we click on or view a positive link, we encourage that.
Here are a few things you can do to help inform, without encouraging more antigun stories:
1) Utilize the "Fair Use' doctrine to its full potential to quote relevant parts of the negative story, likewise only quote small parts of positive stories to encourage people to read the whole thing.
2) Summarize negative stories yourself
3) Don't hotlink to a negative story, or don't click on such links where they are available. Conversely, always hotlink to a positive story and encourage people to use it.
One thing we need to remember about the Internet is that everything gets tracked. Do we want these media organizations, whose primary purpose is to seek attention and ratings, to note that slanted stories decrying gun ownership draw lots of visits and pageviews?
Or would we rather that they see that positive portrayals of gun ownership draw the most attention and ratings?
Everytime we click on or distribute a negative link, we send a Pavlovian message to encourage them to run more stories in that vein. Everytime we click on or view a positive link, we encourage that.
Here are a few things you can do to help inform, without encouraging more antigun stories:
1) Utilize the "Fair Use' doctrine to its full potential to quote relevant parts of the negative story, likewise only quote small parts of positive stories to encourage people to read the whole thing.
2) Summarize negative stories yourself
3) Don't hotlink to a negative story, or don't click on such links where they are available. Conversely, always hotlink to a positive story and encourage people to use it.