How can the MSM credibly report on firearms considering their lack of knowledge?

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damien

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Seriously, I see articles concerning spacecraft and new technology where they get all the relevant information correct, but I rarely see even short articles about firearms without at least one glaring and obvious error. This one is from one of the biggest news sources in America and you would think the error would be obvious to anyone with any firearms experience. If you play Halo, you should have enough experience to detect this mistake:

http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=7518874&page=3

"It's less clear how cartels are getting military-grade weapons. Amid the shelves of pistols and rifles, there is a 9 mm grenade launcher and a portable shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launcher."

Yeah, we have to be worried about 9mm grenade launchers and .45mm semi-automatic handguns. :rolleyes:

But seriously, don't journalists take their jobs seriously? They sure don't seem to. You think they could line up one expert to fact-check these articles before they publish them.
 
Since when does not having any knowledge whatsoever on a subject kept a report or a politician, for that matter, from spouting off about it?


Try Economics...... you think any politicians or "journalists" actually have a clue about economics?
 
Ignorance is apparently a virtue amongst the MSM.

Bill O'Reilly, for example, supported renewing the Assault Weapons Ban on the grounds "you don't want bazookas on the streets."

Clearly, he never read the bill -- because it doesn't address "bazookas." Weapons like the bazooka are covered under the National Firearms Act of 1934. In his ignorace, he sent the message that only the "Assault Weapons Ban" stood between us and "bazookas" i the streets.
 
Seriously, I see articles concerning spacecraft and new technology where they get all the relevant information correct,
Click to expand...

I seriously doubt this. I've seen more than one scientist rail on about the stupidity of the press and their general inability to report even basic science properly.

Frankly, the traditional-style reporter and media are dead. People who go to J-school aren't qualified to report the facts on technical issues they know nothing about.

This is why I find blogging to be such an excellent way to gather data. Assuming you're able to engage your brain and think critically, it's extremely easy to find someone who is not only an expert in any given technical field, but who is also a halfway decent writer, as well.
 
It's not just guns, though the fact that they generally lean left may make it worse. I've been involved in some high profile criminal cases over the years, and they always get some important facts dead wrong. Once you've seen this sort of sloppiness in action, it makes you doubt everything.
 
I always liked the Straits Times (the English language newspaper in Singapore.)

In an article on geo-sychrnous sattelites, the science writer remarked they were "up there in a thin ring of air." (Danged thin! If there were any appreciable air up there, those sattelites would come down PDQ.)

He also went to Ubar -- a recently discoved ancient city in Arabia. Ubar could exist because of a natural underground reservior of water. He commented, "Just think, I was drinking water over 4,000 years old!" (All the water I drink is billions of years old.)

And in an article on a noted beauty, they reported her measurements as "38-38-38." (Built like a garbage can, she was.);)
 
Most reporters dont know jack about anything really. Those of us who have experience in aviation sometimes dont know whether to laugh or cry when hearing some reporter trying to describe an airplane or airplane part or something to do with aircraft. Same can be said about ships, heavy equipment, firefighting etc. My good friend is a retired Oregon State Trooper who told me when still on the job he just refused to talk to reporters, they would either report him out of context or get the story so muddled up it bore no resemblance to what actually happened. Believe nothing of what you hear and only about half of what you see. :scrutiny:
 
A friend of mine used to say, "Ninty-nine times out of a hundred, when you hear or read something in the news, it's something you never heard of. But every now and then, they'll slip up and try to tell you about something you know all about. You can judge the ninty-nine percent by the one percent."
 
Justin and Vern Humphrey have made some excellent points.

There seems to be a huge deficit in critical thinking among people my age. (early twenties) What makes it worse is they're just getting out in the world, starting to come out from under their parents wings and live for themselves. They start to play at being mature and start trying to "get involved" somehow. In most reasonably intelligent young people, this manifests itself as an increased consumption of mainstream media political coverage around which they base their opinions. Many do a good job of weighing what they hear in the news and forming independent opinions based on it, but they don't go far enough. They don't question the news itself and accept it as fact. It spills over into politics, too. Something I noticed around campus during the election that I found incredibly scary was that although many people were doing a pretty decent job of trying to stay open-minded and weigh each major candidate against the other, they were basing their opinions on what the candidates said and not what the candidates had done. Many would take statistics quoted by politicians as gospel because it was a politician saying it, I suppose under the assumption that a politician wouldn't quote false statistics in public, that someone would check it and call them out. And I observed these things at a fairly prestigious Big 10 school, these people are supposed to be among the best and brightest.

Vern Humphrey posted this and it touches on the best way I've found to get people my age to think more critically and independently:

A friend of mine used to say, "Ninty-nine times out of a hundred, when you hear or read something in the news, it's something you never heard of. But every now and then, they'll slip up and try to tell you about something you know all about. You can judge the ninty-nine percent by the one percent."
Click to expand...

The one thing people of my generation are almost all familiar with is the internet. Linking someone to the YouTube video of Ted Stevens' "The internet is not a big truck it's a series of tubes" speech with the question "If a politician is that wrong about something you know about, why should you assume they're correct when they talk about something you don't know about" can do wonders. Finding examples like this in media reporting could probably do the same.
 
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Seriously, I see articles concerning spacecraft and new technology where they get all the relevant information correct, but I rarely see even short articles about firearms without at least one glaring and obvious error
Click to expand...

It's because you know about firearms that you notice the errors. If you were an aerospace engineer, you'd feel the same way about the other stories.
 
It seems as if it goes with the territory (journalism).

I worked at a TV station once upon a time, worked some with the news department. A friend & I fancied ourselves somewhat knowledgeable about firearms (certainly more so than the news idiots) and offered to share the knowledge. Never got one question from them.

So I guess when you (a journalist) have all the answers, you don't need to bother yourself with the riff-raff or small matters like accuracy.
 
They've been reporting on the military for more than two hundred years without knowing anything about THAT.

Remember, anything with tracks is a "tank", and the Bradley fighting vehicle is inadequate (not for its real inadequacies) because it can't take a hit from a 125mm main gun round.
 
now you got me started.....

When a MSM spokesperson stands on the deck of the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid and reads from the teleprompter to the camera "I am speaking to you from the battleship Intrepid in New York Harbor..." I throw my foam rubber brick at the TV and laugh.

The problem is, these idiots think we know nothing until they, the mainstream news media, inform us ignorant masses, when they don't know an aircraft carrier from a battleship. I believe they actually think you can dip a bullet in teflon and it becomes armor piercing, that a Glock can pass a metal detector or X-ray at the airport, or that a semi-auto rifle is a machine gun (they equate "automatic weapons" with semi-automatic and autoloading all the time).

I spent 1969-2003 in typesetting at Kingsport Press and could see that the Bush national guard documents posted by CBS News at their website in 2004 were not 1970s typewritten documents, but something produced on a modern word processor. But the pronouncements of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes that we were idiots for questioning their "proof" convinced me that the MSM don't know manure from peanut butter, but feel that if they say so, whatever they read off the teleprompter is The Truth. The funny thing is, when Gene Lyons asked for more money from his TV producer, he was told that they could pull any bum from under a bridge, give him a shave, hairstyle and suit, and teach him to read from a teleprompter. MSM is the last refuge of deluded, self important imbeciles.
 
MSM

Heard this on a local radio station. Reporter was 'live at the scene'.
Still my all time favorite.

"The victim was was shot fatally three times".

Classic!
 
Do not make the common mistake of thinking they are stupid. They “report” what they do for a reason. Please search YouTube for Tomas Schuman (Yuri Bezmenov) and watch all of the videos. He goes into great detail about the media.
 
They are not stupid. They are wilfully ignorant -- which is something else entirely. It allows them to put spin on the news that defies the facts (because they refuse to learn the facts.)

Wilful ignorance is a form of bigotry -- "You're not worth learning about, and my pre-judged opinions must be accepted."
 
It's a mistake to attribute to malice what can be explained by personality disorders. They have the kind of personality that "knows," not the kind that studies and evaluates.
 
You're under the impression that the MSM gives a rip about whether you think they have credibility?

You are the enemy and they couldn't care less about your opinion.

They have agendas, and accurate facts that get in the way of advancing same are merely annoyances to be bypassed and ignored.

If you repeat a lie often enough..........


:cool:
 
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