USA Today Editor Resignations Fuel Media Credibility Views
May 20, 2004

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Polls to determine the American public’s opinions regarding the credibility of various professions and institutions usually place politicians and journalists on the low side in the veracity sweepstakes.

Curiously though, while most Americans rank Congress as a whole low on the credibility scale, they end up rating their own individual representative on the high side. That seems oxymoronic: If everybody’s individual representative is truly so trustworthy, how can the public rate Congress as a whole so much lower? Maybe that helps explain why so many incumbents keep getting reelected so handily every two years—many of them with no opposition or real debate over the issues.

With gunowners, the reliability ranking of the journalism profession seems to fall well below even the low rating given the media by the general public. Of course, there’s a good reason for that; the media so often gets everything wrong when they report on anything having to do with guns. You’ve probably seen or hear all kinds of errors in describing guns or gun laws. And generally, a newspaper or broadcast station’s editorials sound like they’ve been scripted by the Brady Campaign or the Violence Policy Center (VPC).

The media almost universally has swallowed the anti-gun lingo, so that all semi-automatic firearms are now referred to as “assault weapons” and gun control advocates are now “gun safety experts” while gun rights activists and groups are labeled “anti-gun control.” One of my favorite examples recently was a print news story that referred to a crime gun as “a .38 caliber assault revolver.”

Ban Renewal
This has become especially noticeable in recent weeks as the anti-gunners try to gin up support for a renewal and expansion of the Clinton gun and magazine ban that is due to expire in September. While there is plenty of evidence that the ban was never anything more than a cosmetic political issue linked to the cosmetics of firearms—and never seriously affected criminals—the anti-gunners have fixated on renewing the ban.

The VPC keeps cranking out news releases linking the ban to school kids, terrorists and any other bogeyman the headlines dish up. Recent examples include tying the appeal for the ban’s renewal to the fifth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, the recent seizure of perfectly legal semi-automatics in Italy and kids in general.

The Brady Campaign and their “Million” Mom March (MMM) subsidiary are focusing their May 9 Mother’s Day pageant in Washington, DC, on the slogan “Halt the Assault.”

The week before their Washington event, they began running full page ads in The Washington Post. Their lead off in the series told readers “unless President Bush acts” soon, children will bring “assault weapons” to school in the fall.

“When your kids go back to school, will assault weapons, too?” the ad caption says. The caption is printed over a photograph of a young boy wearing a backpack who is walking away from the camera—and appears to be heading to school.

Paid for by the “Million” Mom March, the ad promoted a May 9 Mother’s Day march for “sensible gun laws.” Notice that the ad refers to “sensible gun laws” not gun control or gun bans.

The ad’s text says. “Unless President Bush acts, these weapons of war will be legal again—just as America’s children go back to school.”

In fact, the ban on certain semi-automatic weapons will expire in September unless Congress—not President Bush—passes a law extending the ban.

The Brady/MMM ad sentiments can be found in most US newspapers and many television and radio commentaries, which brings me back to the subject of media credibility.

Gunowner charges against the media are frequently scoffed at, but the journalism profession, which won’t brook a careful examination of its widespread antipathy to guns and gunowners, keeps getting caught with its fingers deep in the cookie jar of truth.

Newspaper Scandals
Last June, The New York Times was rocked by a credibility scandal when a young reporter was revealed to have fudged many of his bylined stories, and two top editors were forced to resign. The Times, sometimes referred to as America’s newspaper of record, is one of the principle newspapers that acts as a bell cow for most other newspapers around the country.

But problems at The Times, as well as a similar 1980s case at The Washington Post, another bell cow newspaper, were linked to youthful reporters.

However, inexperience won’t wash in the case of USA Today, America’s largest-selling daily newspaper, where a similar case of falsified reporting by a 43-year-old, 20-year veteran reporter led in April to the resignation of two top editors.

The journalism profession indeed has problems with believability and objectivity when the top editors at two of the nation’s largest and most prestigious news vehicles are forced to retire because of professional scandals.

None of these events are likely to cause the American public, and gunowners in particular, to reassess their low opinion of the news media any time soon.

Other News
The late President Harry Truman was fond of saying that a person could often find the real news of the day hidden in small stories on the back pages of a newspaper. While the little stories in back may not be the real keys to the day, they often provide information that might otherwise be overlooked. At Gun Week, we have the advantage of having our own news reading and Internet searches augmented by clippings sent in by readers around the country and e-mails that call out stories we might have missed.

One of these is from Portland, OR, but was printed—and clipped—in The Washington Times.

Officer-involved shootings have become bigger news across the country for a lot of reasons and most city police departments and sheriff’s departments have pretty strict guidelines for reporting and reviewing any shooting that involved the discharge of an officer’s firearm.

In Portland, however, as a grand jury was preparing to review the case of an unarmed motorist who was shot and killed in a confrontation with officers in March, the city has adopted a new policy. Beginning in July, officers will now have to write a report every time they point their gun at someone. Portland Chief Derrick Foxworth announced the policy in response to the public outcry over the motorist’s death.

Maryland Antis’ Mailing
Another such small story comes from The Laurel Leader in Maryland, which reported in early April that CeaseFire Maryland, that state’s major gun control group, had sent a mailing to 6,000 voters in the election district of state Sen. John Giannetti. For readers who may have missed or forgotten Gun Week’s earlier report, Giannetti was the one vote that killed CeaseFire Maryland’s attempt to impose a state ban on so-called assault weapons.

Giannetti’s vote in the General Assembly’s committee hearing the ban proposal was pivotal. Because he voted against the ban proposal, it never came up for a vote this year.

The CeaseFire Maryland mailing, while disguised as voter education material, was clearly designed to cost Giannetti votes on election day. The front of the postcard mailing asked, “Why is your senator, John Giannetti, siding with the NRA to protect assault weapons?”

CeaseFire also claimed that police supported the ban. However, Giannetti told the newspaper that both the Maryland State Police and the Fraternal Order of Police in the state supported his stance on the gun bill.