It is important to read what is written about us

bdickens said:
Even so, that's not NPR's reporting. That's NPR's reporting of what someone else said. Big difference.

Secondly, I clearly acknowledged the editorial bias that NPR has. "Editorial bias" does not equate to "agitprop."
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This is agitprop:


This is agitprop:


This is agitprop:

IMG_7956.jpeg

as is the article to which it refers:


Not because of expressing empathy toward the coroner or the families, but because of the glaring and deliberate falsehoods it uses to weaponize that empathy.
 
bdickens said:
Even so, that's not NPR's reporting. That's NPR's reporting of what someone else said. Big difference.
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When it comes to anything published, you are the company you keep. There is a difference between reporting what a talk show says and airing every single episode. The former is a revelation of a different idea, good or bad. Airing every single episode is endorsement. You can try to defend NPR all you want. But I do not consider them an impartial source in the slightest.
 
So here's my question now:

Do those of you that believe that if a media outlet does not accurately describe technical aspects of firearms or espouse a pro-RKBA view when reporting on "gun crime" or "gun violence," it is then incapable of accurately and factually reporting on any other news stories or social issues (that have no relation to firearms or 2A/RKBA)?
 
The "news" that you see on TV is more drama then news.

If it doesn't fit, they make it fit the narrative. How many have seen things like this? ;)

youtu.be

Today Show Canoe

NBC Today Show correspondent pretends to row a canoe in deep water during a storm, but it is only 6 inches deep. I live in NJ and there was a lot of flooding...
youtu.be youtu.be
 
Old Dog said:
So here's my question now:

Do those of you that believe that if a media outlet does not accurately describe technical aspects of firearms or espouse a pro-RKBA view when reporting on "gun crime" or "gun violence," it is then incapable of accurately and factually reporting on any other news stories or social issues (that have no relation to firearms or 2A/RKBA)?
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Yes.
"News" or entertainment, if they don't get the stuff I know about right, why should I think they get anything else right?
If I can see one thing is slanted, why should I think they are not slanting the rest?
 
Old Dog said:
So here's my question now:

Do those of you that believe that if a media outlet does not accurately describe technical aspects of firearms or espouse a pro-RKBA view when reporting on "gun crime" or "gun violence," it is then incapable of accurately and factually reporting on any other news stories or social issues (that have no relation to firearms or 2A/RKBA)?
Click to expand...
Generally, yes. Michael Crichton summed this up well:

Gell-Mann Amnesia effect - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.m.wiktionary.org en.m.wiktionary.org

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
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As an aside, ever watch a WWII documentary that has no idea of what ships or planes it is portraying. I've seen the same cargo ship being strafed as a carrier, cruiser, battleship, etc. The same old British battleship (the Barnham, IIRC) blow up in every naval battle covered. Just going to go clean my Ceramic Glock 7 with Dawn dish soap. Works well.
 
I gave up when I saw a National Geographic show about a sword maker. The narrator said he quenched the blade in water to harden it. That part might be true but whatever was in that bucket wasn’t water. It burst into flame until the sword was below the surface.
 
For ease of reading, here's the original link to the story.
To the point of the thread, I wouldn't have picked that piece to make it but whatever. It's also worth noting that Propublica is mission-based journalism and this was intended as an expose of Dyke more than anything else. To what end, I don't know since the guy is dead and whatnot.

As for the importance of being in the loop with respect to the general portrayal of "us" in the media, it's not something to get too wound up over. We will never control the narrative on that end of the equation so it's wasted effort to be at odds with the general media. Also, if we don't want to be written about in a negative light and conjure images of the atypical bubba gun owner, we have to not be those types in the first place... and I'm not always sure we aren't.

We are not totally powerless though. What's sorely lacking, and has been for decades in the gun rights movement, is professionally crafted outreach. If we look at other successful contemporary social movements (gay rights is a good example), it's fairly obvious that they got there by way of winning public opinion before they attempted to make substantive changes in law, etc.
Meanwhile, second amendment advocates are brute forcing their way through the judiciary, which while strategically necessary, isn't winning so-called hearts and minds along the way. The point here is, with broad public support, there would be little incentive for the media to write negatively about us (this thread's topic). But more importantly, there would be far less incentive to maintain existing laws which make our lives harder, or write entirely newer more horrible ones, if doing so made the proponents unpopular in the public eye.
 
buck460XVR said:
Sorry, but trying to instill nothing but negative images of them, by belittling and condescending, instead of using intelligent arguments, does nothing but lower ourselves to the level we are trying to instill on those others. Trashing them does not make them want to listen to intelligent arguments, but just turns them off.
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To add to that, those tactics don't work well on the up and coming generations. The survival of the gun rights movement depends on young people and a lot of what might resonate with me (someone on that boomer/gen x cusp) is an alien entity to kids coming of age right now. That's a big problem that isn't being addressed in the RKBA world.

The kids I work with are super smart and super informed having been raised entirely in the information age. Stuff like that Bushmaster man card thing isn't a good fit in the modern world. This is a hard pill for the gun community to swallow.
 
Jim Watson said:
Yes.
"News" or entertainment, if they don't get the stuff I know about right, why should I think they get anything else right?
If I can see one thing is slanted, why should I think they are not slanting the rest?
Click to expand...
Regrettably, if we're talking solely about network television "news" channels, the one channel claiming to be the voice of conservative Americans and the only media outlet that supports the RKBA, gets so many other stories wrong.

At this particular juncture in time, it's pretty clear that none of us Americans should depend solely on one media outlet to get the truth.

Those that believe that a media resource must get every detail on every event and issue totally correct in order to be credible, do not understand how reporting "the news" has always worked in the modern era. And probably believe that Ben Franklin's Pennsylvania Gazette never contained any slanted reporting...

In the early stages of OIF, I was with a unit had three "embedded" reporters (one very well-known) who were with us 24/7, asked great questions, saw what we were doing... and when we read the print stories or saw the network video, our reaction was mostly, "What the hell?" As far as the media is concerned, there is always an agenda.

What I see now is that a lot of the folks on our side (RKBA supporters) simply cannot fathom why there isn't more pro-gun reporting, why the concept of "gun violence" has become so entrenched and stay clueless about why even those in high-crime areas are still so anti-gun and okay with being totally disarmed, prospective victims.

We are just not gonna change how the media reports on firearms and criminal violence involving firearms. That ship has sailed. Look where the current and new generations of journalists are coming from.

We need to take back the public schools, regain control over their curriculum, and (in the words of that anti-gun Canadian singer) teach our children well.

And for those that spot a letter to the editor or op-ed piece in their local newspaper -- or even Newsweek or Time -- spouting the rote anti-gun stupidity, if you're not responding with your own letters and e-mails, you're not helping.
 
Ironicaintit said:
Well, the AR-15 can indeed be a very handy tool to dissuade marauding of all sorts. Would you be happier if they were mini-14s, or shotguns?
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This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.

In the 2015-2016 school year, the federal government reported, there were 235 school shootings. But …​


I know this is an old article but still interesting,
 
Mk-211 said:
I know AR15.com has been mentioned in numerous articles.

Seems fitting as it's the largest black rifle site on the net.

Not sure if THR has ever been in any print or online articles.
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The AR15 site is also one of the oldest, and hosted a lot of vitriol and even racism. It’s kind of a vestige of the old internet, and was never moderated as well as THR to keep things civil. If you wanted to make gun owners look bad, you could have probably found something there.
 
Cherry picking and strawman arguments are just as intellectualy dishonest when we do it as when the antis do it. So is moving the goalposts.

Some of you really need to practice your reading comprehension. I never said that NPR was always completely accurate or that they are completely unbiased. Nor did I say that they give opposing viewpoints equal time. What I said is that they are one of the few news organizations that at least pretends to be objective and gave examples.

But you would have to open your minds and develop some critical thinking skills to see that.

The title of this thread is "It is important to read what is written about us." I tell you what: NPR's reporting about what people like the afforementioned Ms. Anderson says about us is going to be a whole hell of a lot more accurate than what the GOA is going to say.

And that's important. Because strawman arguments and cherry picking are just as intellectualy dishonest when we do it as when the antis do it.

​

 
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