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The quote of the day is presented by Guns.com

In their effort to further the narrative that “gun violence” in America is increasing and out of control, media coverage of mass shootings is 24/7, wall-to-wall. Well, some mass shootings.

The fact that crime of all kinds, including gun violence, is actually at historic lows — even in America’s large urban centers — is merely an unhelpful data point. So it never gets mentioned in all of the air time and column inches. For some reason.

But in their effort to convince Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public that the solution to this non-existent problem is ever-more gun control laws, the media’s own coverage may actually be perpetuating the problem.

Polls show that just 12 percent of Americans believe gun violence has declined in the U.S., a reality they likely missed because of extended media coverage of mass shootings. This coverage is problematic for multiple reasons.

For starters, a 2018 working paper suggested that intense media coverage of mass shootings is actually perpetuating them. Economists Jay Walker and Michael Jetter wanted to better understand the motives of mass shootings. They explored a three-year data set (Jan. 1, 2013 to June 23, 2016), and their findings suggest “a positive and statistically significant effect of media coverage dedicated to shootings on the number of shootings in the subsequent week.”

In other words, coverage of mass shootings appears to be encouraging them. But even if one doesn’t accept the premise that exhaustive media coverage is causing more mass shootings, it’s clearly distorting our perception of gun violence in America. This is a problem.

– Jon Miltimore in Mass Shootings Are a Horrible Way to Understand Gun Violence

 

 

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37 COMMENTS

    • Just keep telling the story the way you want to tell it.. Present it the way you want it to be presented, and a good portion of the public will be in your hip pocket… You convince them what to think rather than simply presenting all the facts and letting them use their own minds….

      • The modern, progressive MSM has, effectively, become the Ministry of Truth. BLM, AntiFa and the rest of the thug Progressive enforcers have assumed the role of the Ministry of Love, warhawks like Senator H. Clinton labor for the Ministry of Peace and Progressive State policies, like California espouses, are the exploratory efforts in creating the Ministry of Plenty.

        The “Progressive” voters don’t realize that they are forging the very links of their own slavery chains.

    • Yellow journalism has been around since the first journalist came into existence. The news has always been slanted. Just look at Cronkite and what a POS he really was, yet he is held up as the gold standard of journalists.

  2. You can see it in the way the perps adopt pieces of the last.
    It was mostly handguns until one day somebody used an AR and the media went apeshit so now it’s mostly AR’s. It was just jeans and a t-shirt until one day somebody dressed tacti-cool then it was all tacti-cool until somebody wore an LBV and then more wore LBV’s until somebody actually wore plates and now more wear plates. It was a private grudge until somebody posted a vid or manifesto now they all post vids or manifestos.

    Really, it’s a long chain of mental screwball poseurs. It’s a scene now like any other. So when one happens and the media essentially advertises the product the poseurs in the scene get all worked up and want it too.

    • If we had real allies in congress they would be redirecting attention away from red flag B.S. by proposing limits on news orgs from reporting on mass shootings.

      Limit news orgs to one 30 second report with no mention of shooter name. The general public would see the rational about stopping copycats. It would be “For the children”.

      Oh the howls from the MoFoMedia would be enjoyed.

      • (ETA: Believe I caught your sarcasm on second read. Only on first sips of first cup of coffee. Regardless, this may be of use to someone…)

        That will aid in censorship even worse. If you don’t have WHO, what, when, and where then it is difficult to find out the real facts… Sometimes we might even find out why. Who is going to be able to fact check MSM if nobody can know the name of the murderer? This is starting to sound like something from New Zealand or the UK. They love censorship.

        Besides, these are statistically insignificant events. Why would you or anyone else support First Amendment violations and greatly aid in government censorship? How is this functionally or morally different than the antis clamoring for gun control “because we must do something!”?

        • The point is not to ban speech but to propose the law to lay bare the hypocritical nature of the msm.

  3. I’d like to say I remember when the news was actually news, and not dem talking points, but I’m not that old.

  6. We should probably just stop calling the media the ‘media’. Maybe ‘propaganda machine’ would be a more accurate title.

    • We should stop calling them the media, we should call them by the name they have earned, “Pravda”. If the USSR had an official mouth piece called Pravda why shouldn’t we admit the “media” is the democrat party (communist party USA) version of Pravda.

      By the way, Pravda means “truth” in Russian, that is, “truth as the party wants it to be”.

  7. What ever would America do without the Leftard propaganda wing selling the agenda,I can think of many.

  8. Why aren’t there more mainstream news outlets that lean toward truth, or, lean conservative? How is it that there are no ultra-rich conservatives interested in owning and running a news outlet.

    Breightbart is OK. So is Gateway Pundit. Zero Hedge, is good for in-depth analysis. Infowars is always good for a rant (I shop there every month – best coffee, far better than Star#ucks). But all of these are ‘alternative, poorly funded. Fox has been teetering on fake news since the Murdocks too over.

    Where are the moneyed conservatives in the news business?

    • I find it interesting that you praise Infowars and call Fox “fake news.” Don’t misunderstand: Fox has every bit as much hyperbole and silliness as the rest of them… it’s just… Infowars? Really?

      • Actually, I said “Infowars is always good for a rant” and that I like the coffee they sell. That being said, yes, Infowars. They take some getting used to and you need to have your hyperbole filters on, but they are staunch defenders of the constitution and the Bill of Rights. They get the facts correctly more that most and do not hide their corrections on the back page. I used to think they were a joke until I started to listen carefully.

        As for Fox, I am a fan of The Five, Tucker, and Sean.

    • Try out “One America News” OAN channel. It is a privately owned very conservative outlet.

  9. Yellow journalism is as old as the hills. Most so called “conservative” outlets just whine out the pre existing leftist narrative. Whining is a waste of time unless you are Coulter or Hannity, then it pays (them) while still doing nothing but damage to conservative thought.

  10. Truth doesn’t matter to the media, nor does fairness. The Left is engaging in a cultural civil war and the vast majority of the media is their propaganda arm. The media doesn’t present “the news” so much as it presents a narrative that is meant to shape public opinion, and they’ve been very effective – to the detriment of our civil liberties, civil discourse, and a truly informed populace.

    Because of them we live in a country that is more highly taxed, more highly regulated, and less free than ever before.

    • “The Left is engaging in a cultural civil war and the vast majority of the media is their propaganda arm.”

      The Leftists are so very proud of that ‘culture war’ that they have won.

      The culture of theirs that glorifies mass-murderers by slathering endless attention on them in the news. If we don’t get a handle on the messaging that murders by firearms are at truly historic lows, we’re gonna lose this thing.

      A good first step is to use the same style of talking points delivery that they use. When our side gets on camera for media interviews, begin and keep hammering home the truth about guns, that death by them is one-half what it was 20-odd years ago. That hands and feet consistently kill more often than all long guns combined. And to pointedly ask the Leftists while on camera why are they bald-faced lying about the murder rates? There is no ‘skyrocketing’ mass-murder rates.

      We need to do as they do and create and run ‘boot camps’ dedicated to countering their lies. Our freedom depends on it…

  11. When the story begins with the line “This was the worst shooting in X years” or “The death toll exceeded the last mass shooting by ……” some loony living in his grandmother’s basement takes that as a personal challenge. He says “I can beat that” and gears up. The loonies know that people will talk about them for the next fifty or a hundred years, analyzing their behavior and expressing sympathy that they didn’t have a puppy.

  13. As mentioned 10HS chillen were “mass shot” in Alabama last night. As in Chiraq likely the “wrong” color. Scant coverage. My local news is especially pathetic…it’s almost like they’re paid to suck!

  14. People like to think this is a relatively new way that the present the new. The media has ALWAYS acted like this. Google “yellow journalism”. it’s a name for just this type of news reporting that was coined in the 1880’s. What has changed is the disappearance of most investigating journalist. 40+ years ago reporters actually went out in the world to get their news stories, asked questions, talked to witnesses, and looked to fill in missing information. Now we have talking parrots repeating what is in a script. They get their FACTS from social media post, cell phone video and shady actors pushing their agendas. The BIG problem is the 24 hour news cycle where the (maybe) news is repeated over, and over, and over again.

    You know the saying “If you tell a lie often enough even you will start to believe it.”
    I have a theory of how these media lies end up as facts in peoples minds.
    The first time you hear it, it’s new information. You think, “Wow , that’s news to me.”
    The next few times you here it, you pick up on things you missed before.
    By the time you’ve heard it a half dozen times , you are remembering some of the details.
    After a dozen times your brain starts to tell you “You already know this, this is nothing new”
    A few more times and you’re brain is telling you “I’ve know this all along, so it has to be true.”
    This can happen in just a few days because of the 24 hour news and every reporter is reading the exact same script. Your brain has just been conditioned to accept manufactured “FACTS” as common knowledge.
    It’s brainwashing, pure and simple.

    • “The media has ALWAYS acted like this. Google “yellow journalism””.

      An excellent point.

      “Yellow journalism – noun – journalism that is based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration.”

      Ram home the point that this is nothing new, and that it is despicable behavior. Dancing on the graves of dead needs to be called out for what it is…

  15. History lesson: Reporters oe old did all they could to report unbiased news. Then William Randolph Hurst decided that making news exciting sold more news papers (remember them?). And we’re still stuck with that mentality today. It even had a name, “Yellow Journalism.”

    • I wasn’t there to witness it (I may be old but I’m not that old) but I think there’s a good argument that Hearst helped start the Spanish American war. He certainly pushed the idea the USS Maine was sunk by a Spanish mine. Years later more rational investigations concluded that the Maine was lost to a smoldering fire in the coal bunkers which was quite common in the days of coal fired ships. I’m sure that Hearst wanted to sell newspapers but lots of students of that period see him as a believer in an ” American Empire” that would compete on the world stage with the British, French and Germans.

  17. guns aint even in the top 10 list of causes of death
    of course democrats really dont care about human life do they
    because if they really did they would be pro life and pro gun and pro immigration enforcement and pro capitalism and pro everything else that theyre anti about

  18. More hysteria breeds more shootings, which breeds more hysteria and support for gun control. Win/win for the Democratic media machine. They don’t really care how many people have to die to make gun control happen, because those are necessary sacrifices to get to the loss of life they plan to inflict AFTER gun control is accomplished.

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