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

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A former boss I used to have to put up with, (in one of my many jobs in the audio/video industry), came from a news background. His philosophy about any given project was FAST!.... all else came in second. It had to be produced FAST.... not correct,... not good,... not quality... Just FAST! it was a source of frustration and even mockery around the office.
For years now I have known that the news is the informational equivalent of fast food. Not correct, not good, not intellectual sustenance,... just FAST!

:banghead::fire::cuss:
 
Hi Damien,

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.
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I'm told in the board room of Gannet newspapers there is a frame that reads- 'You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time. But we are willing to settle for half.'

News services exist not to inform but to make money and achieve power. Helping political agenda is part and parcel in the latter. The truth gets in the way of the bottom line.

Selena
 
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A 9mm grenade launcher wouldn't be illegal anyway. The bore size and explosive payload would be small enough to not be considered a DD. Now I want one.
 
They are not stupid.
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Some of them are.

I once shared an elevator with Chicago TV "journalist", and serial drunk driver, Walter Jacobson. A sack of hammers would have mocked him for his stupidity and arrogance.

He once reported on WBBM TV that anybody could "buy machineguns through the mail". His evidence? An ad for plastic BB guns in the back of Soldier of Fortune.
 
I laugh at their arrogance with respect to blogs. How dare we, the common people, interpret the news without them. They, MSM, consider themselves to be much smarter than us in that we apparently don't have the capacity to judge information ourselves. (Of course many of us don't, but then neither do they).

Same think strikes me as funny when people critizise Wikipedia. How dare people maintain their own sources of information and not use the knowledge gatekeepers of establishment intelligencia (universities, etc).
 
Not all of them. Most are very bright, they are intellectually dishonest leftist propagandist.
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That's close to a dictionary definition of willful ignorance. They arrogantly "know" what they know, and have no obligation to investigate the facts.
 
my guess:

The majority of the public doesn't realize that the MSM is wrong on their facts because the majority of the public has their facts wrong too.... they got their facts from movies and TVs and the MSM just plays into this with their baloney facts.

The only people that know the facts are us gun friendly folk. Unfortunately, we aren't taken seriously when we point out the flaws in the media reports because the majority of the public views us at nutcases.

Yes - that also includes you. You own so much as one gun, and you're nucking futs as far as many people are concerned.

When you get to people like me and most THR members with a collection, our credibility is in the toilet because we own "arsenals". Even my own parents comment that I have enough guns and ammo for an entire army when the reality is that I maybe have less than 10% of what would be needed for a small rural police department.

The MSM will go unchallenged until somebody with serious clout and national credibility stands up and puts them in their place on national tv.

A few people in the media have tried. The question of Carolyn Mcarthy (spelling is probably wrong) about what a barrel shroud was a good attempt.
 
Whats that old saying?

"Those who don't watch the news are uninformed and, those who watch the new are misinformed"?

I haven't watch the news in many years. One day In my middle teens, I was watching ABC (i think) and they reported something that I knew was wrong and it just hit me, like a slap in the face, that the news misinforms so easily that its pathetic.

The misinformation is as simple as a network saying "It's illegal for kids to have guns". Illegal for them to purchase guns? Does "have" mean to own guns? to possess guns? to shoot guns? What defines a "kid"? Where does the kid live? etc etc. VERY broad and ambiguous statements like that are very common place and widespread in the media. An ignorant person hears that and believes it's illegal for kids/minors/children (whatever the media might call them) to have ANYTHING to do with guns and so now they believe guns + kids = automatically bad. And of course, the vast vast vast majority of people will believe that because they heard it on their favorite news network and are too lazy and ignorant to find out the truth with research.

Sadly, facts and truth take a backseat to peoples greed.

Stupid people believe stupid stuff said by stupid people, and the only thing I believe that is more dangerous than that is when stupid people believe stupid stuff said by intelligent people.

These people FEEL that guns are bad and won't listen to anything that goes against their FEELINGS.

Pathetic, sad, and cowardly.
 
VERY broad and ambiguous statements like that are very common place and widespread in the media. An ignorant person hears that and believes it's illegal for kids/minors/children (whatever the media might call them) to have ANYTHING to do with guns and so now they believe guns + kids = automatically bad.
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I wonder what words would best describe this?
smiley_smartass.gif
 
Some of my cases in point on the sorry state of journalism (political advocacy as news reporting):

The Thornburgh-Boccardi Report (http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/complete_report/CBS_Report.pdf) on the Dan Rather/Mary Mapes CBS news report on the "discovered" Bush national guard memos.

Typography expert Joseph Newcomer's response (http://www.flounder.com/bush4.htm) to a Columbia Journalism Review attack (http://cjr.org/issues/2005/1/pein-blog.asp) on his analysis of the Bush memos. The CJR article has disappeared (returns HTTP 404 - File not found) but Newcomer quotes and analyses the points raised in the CJR article.
 
Some of my cases in point on the sorry state of journalism (political advocacy as news reporting):
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Two directly gun related cases in point:

CNN ran a story on how "assault weapons" were more "dangerous" or "powerful" than other firearms. To "prove" this, they showed both being fired. The "assault weapon" destroyed cinder blocks, while the other firearm didn't. Turns out that the other firearm wasn't shot AT the cinder blocks.

During the original "assault weapons" debate, one of the local Cleveland stations talked about "assault weapons" while running footage of Cleveland cops shooting MACHINE GUNS. NO connection, AT ALL in the legislation. They got a letter about that one.

Another (the same?) Cleveland station announced that someone's vehicle was found to contain some quantity of "unregistered" firearms. I called the police department mentioned in the story to ask them if their town had "registration". They didn't. I asked them how a firearm could then be "registered". They referred me to the reporter. Strangely, he never returned my calls. By the way, there's no registration ANYWHERE in Ohio. There CAN'T be. All gun laws are preempted at the state level. No state registration, no registration AT ALL.

A good 50% of "journalism" these days appears to be of a kind with Calvin's class report on bats from the "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, in which he described them as "bugs" because he couldn't be bothered to actually read a book on bats.

The primary hallmarks of contemporary "journalism" appear to be intellectual laziness and dishonesty.
 
Assigning specific negative attributes to all journalists is akin to the antis' assigning of specific negative attributes to all gun owners. Both stereotypes are nonsensical on their face and totally without merit. You can't lump all journalists into the same ball, any more than you can lump all gun owners into one.
 
Assigning specific negative attributes to all journalists is akin to the antis' assigning of specific negative attributes to all gun owners.
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The lack of intellectual curiosity and more importantly intellectual honesty on the part of the commercial media is of such a longstanding and broad character, non-specific to any particular issue, that it can't be dismissed.

Entirely too many "journalists" are ignorant, arrogant, indolent, prejudiced hacks. And far too many of those are PROUD of it.

It's like watching a '30s or '40s comedy. I'm surprised when Black people AREN'T portrayed as lazy buffoons. Similarly, I'm astonished when the contemporary media get a story dealing with ANY technical matters factually CORRECT. The "magic realism" of today's "journalists" is a perfect analog to the racial stereotypes of vintage movies. It's a crutch, a substitute for truth, and a way to pander to the ignorant and the malicious.

Most commercial media coverage of firearms issues has no more relationship to the facts than the Institute for Historical Review's pronouncements on the Holocaust. Sometimes there's an equivalent degree of dishonesty and malice.
 
As firearms go, the MSM is not the only purveyors of misinformation. Seems like in this subjuct escpecially fact are more often wrong than write. Take literature for example. Otherwise well researched writers often get firearms related facts wrong.

Of course it could be me nitpicking on a subject I know a lot about.
 
.cheese wrote: "The only people that know the facts are us gun friendly folk. Unfortunately, we aren't taken seriously when we point out the flaws in the media reports because the majority of the public views us at nutcases.

Yes - that also includes you. You own so much as one gun, and you're nucking futs as far as many people are concerned.

When you get to people like me and most THR members with a collection, our credibility is in the toilet because we own "arsenals". Even my own parents comment that I have enough guns and ammo for an entire army when the reality is that I maybe have less than 10% of what would be needed for a small rural police department."
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It's like that with a lot of hobbies. People who don't know much about the subject of said hobby think the hobbyists are nuts. People ask me all the time "why do you have 4 computers?", I've been accused of being a hacker (mostly jokingly), and so on. At least there's no anti-computer lobbyists trying to make computers illegal "to prevent hacking and piracy". Course there are the stupid software patents and such ...

I guess it's because people aren't scared of computers like they are of guns. Personally, I'd be more scared of computers. How many people a year are a victim of ID theft vs how many people a year get shot? For that matter, how many people a year die in car wrecks? Maybe we should label sports car owners nuts and say they're endangering society and make laws limiting how much HP your engine can have ...
 
As firearms go, the MSM is not the only purveyors of misinformation. Seems like in this subjuct escpecially fact are more often wrong than write. Take literature for example. Otherwise well researched writers often get firearms related facts wrong.

Of course it could be me nitpicking on a subject I know a lot about.
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And of course, a lot of people (and apparently most "journalists") learn everything they know about firearms from CSI-Ulan Bator and Die Hard XXXIV.

Acquiring firearms knowledge from TV and movies is like learning about astronomy from watching a Flash Gordon serial.
 
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