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The times they are a-changin’ at CNN. Now that the bottom-dwelling (ratings-wise) “news” network is under new ownership, it has shed such journalistic eminences as Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon (from prime time) and Brian Stelter in an effort to at least appear more objective and informative and less, well, doctrinaire.

Apparently in an effort to burnish its journalistic credentials and attempt to present both sides of an important issue, CNN announced yesterday the launch of something called their ‘Guns in America’ beat team. It’s the inclusion of one member of that team that has our friends in the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex foot-stompingly apoplectic with outrage.

CNN says these newly-hired analysts will be “dedicated to tracking and unpacking all aspects of the complex and divisive issues surrounding guns and gun violence in the country.” Toward that end, the group will be comprised of Josh Campbell, Jennifer Mascia, Abené Clayton…and Stephen Gutowski.

That’s one CNN talking head (the network’s “guns and security” correspondent), one Bloomberg-paid gun control advocate, one “Guns and Lies in America” beat journalist for The Guardian…and Stephen Gutowski.

Gutowski, if you’re not familiar with him, was a journalist for the Washington Free Beacon before hanging his own shingle and starting The Reload Substack site to provide, as he describes it, “sober, serious reporting on–as well as analysis of–firearms policy and politics to accomplish those goals. No hot takes. No screaming. No manipulating. Just reporting.”

Wait…so CNN will have someone on staff who’s actually knowledgeable of and objective about firearms, gun control laws, the gun culture, and the politics surrounding all of that? Someone who can reasonably be characterized as supporting the Second Amendment?

Well we CAN’T HAVE THAT!

That pretty much sums up the reactions of people like Shannon Watts, Fred Guttenberg and Keith Olbermann upon learning of CNN’s new hire. Their response to hearing the news was — how to put this — less than nuanced.

Keith seems…disturbed.

Mayor Mike’s bought-and-paid-for hoplophobic harridan was, as always, OUTRAGED.

OK then.

If you’re keeping score at home here, folks, you’ve noticed something. CNN’s new gun crew or ‘Guns in America’ beat team — whatever — will consist of an anti-gun talking head, a hack who’s paid by Michael Bloomberg to generate anti-gun agitprop, an anti-gun “journalist”…and Stephen Gutowski.

A three-to-one ratio — whatever the topic may be — is about as balanced as anything you’ll see on any “news” program these days. That’s what now passes for objective issues analysis.

You have three (or four, or sometimes five) people representing the network’s official viewpoint and/or the conventional wisdom…and — maybe — one poor sap on the panel who’s there as a sacrificial lamb. Someone who’s been given a seat at the table, but is really only there to be run over by the other panel members and shouted down when he or she presents an alternate viewpoint. All so the producers can claim objectivity.

It’s actually noteworthy that CNN will be paying someone like Gutowski to take that seat. They’ll have someone on board who knows that an AR-14 isn’t really a thing. Someone who can distinguish between a semi-auto rifle and a machine gun (and who’s actually shot both of them). Someone who is aware that America’s 85 million gun owners aren’t all Nazis, white supremacists, racists, or fascist sister-humpers.

But this — someone actually communicating facts rather than discredited talking points — is precisely what people like Watts, Guttenberg and the mentally unbalanced Olbermann simply can’t abide.

They oppose the inclusion of even a single, outnumbered voice on a little-watched news channel who can’t be relied upon to spout the party line when the subject is “gun violence” in America, someone who doesn’t support outlawing some (and eventually all) civilian-owned firearms, someone who doesn’t see the moral imperative of rolling back Second Amendment rights.

They’re so knee-knockingly insecure in the factual underpinnings and level of public support for their deeply held beliefs that they can’t allow a Stephen Gutowski to appear on one of their once-safe talkfests if he’s going to refuse to toe the party line on civilian disarmament.

So kudos to CNN for taking a step — if a minuscule one — in the direction of balance and objectivity. We can’t wait for the reactions from all the usual suspects when he points out on air that Americans defend themselves with guns about 14 times more often than people are killed with them (you are going to mention that, aren’t you Stephen?).

But whatever Gutowski says and however many times he appears on air, the squealing, shock, and howls that CNN’s announcement has already produced have already been more than worth the price of admission.

 

 

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59 COMMENTS

  1. “The times they are a-changin’ at CNN.”

    Wake me up when they stop inviting known liars from the deep state to push their propaganda.

  2. How long till he becomes pro gun control as to not bite the hand that feeds him?

    I sure as hell hope he brings up media contagion. That would be a treat.

  3. Anothor attempt to put a smiley face on backdoor Gun Control. They’ll say anything and everything to look fair and objective. What they won’t say or conclude is, “History Confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is rooted in racism and genocide.”

    Sadly many so called defenders of the Second Amendment who claim to be on point don’t have the integrity to say it much less back it up.

  4. Can’t tolerate a hole in the electrified fencing around the groupthink plantation.
    Dangerous ideas might escape or find their way in.

  5. CNN will always be a horn-blowing broadcasting source for anarchist and leftist deceitful propaganda. I’ll never trust ANYTHING they do. 99.9% of them there are seditious turds that need to be doing prison time for treasonous behavior.

  6. Hope the guy has the set to put up and stay in the fight.
    I expect him to get shouted down, called a liar when he presents real, hard facts, and a lot of “WHATABOUTTHECHILDREN?”

  7. Let them be outraged. And Shannon Watts, let her be outraged more than the others. Seriously, think about it – they are outraged because they didn’t get to stack the deck this time and their deceptive narrative would be endangered with a threat of actual objectivity and fact.

    So lets see how it works out.

  8. Hmmm…bears a striking resemblance to the strategy ABC employees on the view; hire three Punches and one Judy and then let the idiots enjoy the fiasco of Judy’s beat-down. Eventually Judy can’t take it anymore and quits and they bring in a new Judy.

    • “Punches and one Judy“

      I really enjoy foreign commenters posting here on TTAG, it gives us the globalist perspective.

      By contrast, here on the American side of the pond, we would use the metaphor of ‘The Three Stooges’.

      • Im only foreign because I am an New Yorker; did you not have Punch and Judy on your local Sunday morning TV? If you’re commenting on the extra “e” I plead guilty, I use it often, was trained that way. Anyway, the three stooges aren’t a good analogy, that’s just the same three idiots beating each other up. Here we have three idiots beating up someone who can put together a cogent thought.

      • I am originally from the Upper Mid-west. I remember the Punch and Judy Show as a youngster. Old enough to remember Chester on Gunsmoke as well.

      • MINOR Miner49er. Yep, which one of the Three Stooges are you portraying? Certainly not Moe.

    • “New Coke’ was a deceitful plot by multinational agribusiness.

      The goal was to switch from cane sugar to corn syrup, because republican congressmen provide large subsidies to multinational agribusiness companies to support the corn market, thus making corn syrup much cheaper to sweeten products.

      Of course, high levels of corn syrup intake lead to morbid obesity and other health conditions, but it’s good for the corporate bottom line.

      The ‘new coke’ formula was just a BS placeholder, when they brought classic Coke ‘back’ no one realized they’d switched to corn syrup

      • @Miner49er

        “because republican congressmen provide large subsidies to multinational agribusiness companies to support the corn market, thus making corn syrup much cheaper to sweeten products.”

        That’s pure BS.

        Congressmen don’t give ‘subsides’. It takes a bill that passes both house and senate then approved by the president to provide subsidies for agriculture. Its called more commonly the ‘farm bill’ and it was started in 1933, and given its biggest boost to new levels by Obama with a subsidies increase of billions of dollars of which 74% of the money went to 10% of those eligible and every one of that 10% of them was a democrat administration backer/supporter.

      • You mean like the subsidies paid to a California land owner provided they didn’t grow any crops on the land? Land that was known (locally and at the state government level)to be covered with asphalt and surrounded by apartment complexes. This came out years ago and the person is still getting paid.

        • “In 1981, Dwayne Andreas got his wish. President Ronald Reagan signed a law placing high quotas on imported sugar, which quickly raised the domestic price of sugar to twice the price on global markets. And that cemented HFCS as the choice for Coke and a while lot of manufacturers of various things“

          Thanks Ronnie!

          Here is another perspective:

          “Coca-Cola dubbed the product it reintroduced in July 1985 “Coke Classic,” but it wasn’t quite the recipe everyone at The Varsity was drinking in the ’40s. That version was made with cane sugar. Coke Classic—the new old Coke, or was it the old New Coke?—was made with high-fructose corn syrup instead. Eager to press the advantage won by Mullins and his pals, the sugar industry launched a new campaign arguing that the new old Coke was still not “the real thing.” And that was how America would come to learn something significant about the man whose rebellion, more than anything else, brought down a soda giant: He didn’t even like Coke.

          After the dousing ceremony, Mullins hardly took a break. At the end of July, he held a press conference to announce his next crusade. He would not rest until Coke was once more made with real sugar. Coke Classic had made him sick, he reported. He felt ill after drinking only two rum-and-cokes“

          https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/what-if-weve-all-been-wrong-about-what-killed-new-coke/?gclid=CjwKCAjwpuXpBRAAEiwAyRRPgdMWkhlktbIPsU2gRba6olvCNUBFxJomF0eQsD6Zzb0Ab7Q4LrKsJxoCmLgQAvD_BwE

      • Coke had already transitioned to HFCS prior to the release of New Coke. Also, Pepsi tastes better. Coke just has better marketing.

        A few years ago I picked up a retro style Mtn Dew bottle. I just thought it looked cool. It tasted weird. I thought it was old or something. It turns out, it had sugar instead of HFCS. I was just used to the current Mtn Dew taste.

        • Yes, Coke had already transition to HFCS prior to ‘New Coke’.

          Subsidies for crops started in 1933. And year over year continued. Eventually, in 1971 there was a a massive surprise sale of US grain to the Soviet Union and this triggered a boom in corn prices, which in turn led to a massive ramp-up in corn planting. By the mid-’70s, corn prices became more reasonable but the subsdies were still coming in so farmers kept planting as much corn as they could. The result was a massive overproduction of corn.

          But something happened, and that something was Ethanol in the 1970’s. A company called ‘Archer Daniels Midland’ had access to all the corn one could ever want and discovered a cheap way to make Ethanol from corn. They wanted to basically corner the market on Ethanol because they thought it could disrupt the massive gasoline market and replace gasoline as a fuel

          But something else ‘Archer Daniels Midland’ was also making was HFCS. Their production of Ethanol and HFCS involved the same milling process called ‘wet milling’.

          To make ethanol from corn, you ferment the starch and distill it into pure alcohol. To make HFCS, you add an enzyme to the starch that transforms some of its glucose into fructose producing something with a sweetness profile similar to sugar or in other words HFCS. A single wet-milling plant could make both, and ‘Archer Daniels Midland’ began investing big in wet-milling in the early 1970s, a time when high gasoline and sugar prices offered opportunity for cheaper substitutes.

          The company came up with two big ideas: ethanol, designed to disrupt the massive gasoline market; and high-fructose corn syrup to break up ‘big sugar’s’ hold on the soda industry. < this is where HFCS started being pushed into the soda market, and didn't have anything to do with subsidies but had a lot to do with making money for Dwayne Andreas who was at the time an industry titan who led 'Archer Daniels Midland'.

          But there was another problem aside from Ethanol not taking off at the time like they had planned. That problem was that after 'Archer Daniels Midland' started investing so heavily in production of HFCS in 1974 sugar prices plummeted from 65 cents to 8 cents per pound.

          Inexpensive foreign imports had driven down the sugar price. As a result, 'Archer Daniels Midland' could not make high-fructose corn syrup cheaply enough to compete. To overcome this the company turned to politics and supported lobbying efforts by Florida sugarcane growers to convince Congress to impose a quota on foreign-produced sugar.

          In 1981, Dwayne Andreas got his wish. President Ronald Reagan signed a law placing high quotas on imported sugar, which quickly raised the domestic price of sugar to twice the price on global markets. And that cemented HFCS as the choice for Coke and a while lot of manufacturers of various things and New Coke use of HFCS was simply because sugar was more expensive.

  11. More respected “news” organization?? That ship sailed a long time ago! They need to stop assuming people don’t have good memories!!

  15. The Communist News Network, fka the Clinton News Network, can never be redeemed. That would be like giving Ted Bundy a pass if he funded a home for abused woman.

  16. CNN….”Comical Nauseating Nuisance”…. never watch it, but hearing it socially discussed in expletive profanity and vile cursing name calling! CNN those rotten far leftish sons-a-bitches…..

  19. [pushes glasses up]

    Actually… The AR-14 did exist, as an Armalite prototype. Say AR-lowish number, and there’s a decent chance there’s an Armalite model or prototype for it.

    Politicians are still morons.

  21. Someone who is pro 2A on a “Major” “NEWS” outlet is going to cause proggs heads to explode no matter what.
    Likely what is being set up is the 2A guy will get run over and be blamed for every crime committed with a firearm no matter who actually committed the act. Wouldn’t be surprised if he is pushed off to 1 side and only allowed to be the punching bag for the Disarmament types.

  22. Once upon a time I had a Twitter account. In that sewer, I found Gutowski to be a level-headed purveyor of facts who interacted with followers in a down to Earth manner and his only purpose was to “get it right.”

    Long before that, Shannon Watts blocked me for asking simple questions and delivering simple truths.

    You average CNN viewer is the intended audience for Gutowski’s input, not us. If he can keep his integrity – and I think he can – that audience should benefit greatly from his presence. I sure hope so.

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