The NRA’s Natalie Foster has some well-intended advice for members of the media when it comes to firearms, crime, prohibition and the good ol’ 2A. It’s all very well reasoned and clearly articulated. And the People of the Gun who hit play will, en masse, nod their heads in dutiful agreement. There’s only one problem: Ms. Foster’s earnest efforts to correct the “inaccurate perceptions” spouted by the fourth estaters with whom she ate bar-b-que in D.C. are based on the assumption that they’re really interested in accurately portraying the truth about guns, the people who own them or their impact on crime and society. If only . . .

Rather, they see any inaccuracies, misconceptions and outright falsehoods they routinely spew – especially where firearms are concerned – as features, not a bugs. It all comports so nicely with their world view, why let objectivity or statistics get in their way? Their “facts” may be fake, but they’re accurate. And they’re repeatedly regurgitated – remember 90% want universal background checks? – in service to the larger, more important agenda of ridding the country of the scourge that is civilian gun ownership.

No, the old days of dispassionately reporting who, what, when, where and why – if they ever really existed at all – are long gone. So while getting the facts out there is always welcome, expecting the kind of people Ms. Foster ran into to change what they’re reporting and how they’re skewing it is like the frog expecting the scorpion to let him get all the way across the stream. It’s just not in their nature.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Anti-gunners use willful ignorance to continue pushing their agenda. They don’t want to know the facts since they do not support their worldview.

  2. News flash, they’re reporting isn’t any better when it comes to other topics.

    • ^ This.. but I think you should have put reporting in quotes as it would imply they were actually reporting the news instead of following a narrative bias about an event.

  3. The media is only interested in the truth insofar as it does not conflict with their party line. If the truth does conflict, they are only willing to accept it when it hits them in the face, hard, and there’s literally no other option, and even then they do it grudgingly. For evidence, see the MSM coverage of the Zimmerman trial. Most of them spent the entire trial talking about how this or that was “good for the prosecution,” to the point that one of two things became clear: Either they weren’t watching the trial at all, or they had an agenda to push, regardless of the facts. Only at the very end, when it was completely unavoidable, did a few of them start to crack and honestly admit that the prosecution never had a case at all. But most still didn’t even make it that far, but fell back on the “Well, the jury has spoken (big sigh)” line.

  4. I forgive people for being uninitiated. Nobody can be an expert on everything. I can’t forgive protracted ignorance. They parrot the same myths over and over. These are people who don’t own guns, they don’t like guns, they don’t know anybody who owns guns and they don’t like gun owners. They are bigots. And bigotry practiced on a societal, systemic scale is fascism.

  5. The ones that don’t know don’t want to know. They’re happy in their little bubble of ignorance.
    The ones that DO know are actively suppressing the information because it does not suit their political agenda.

    You decide which is worse.

  7. I hate to say it, but the Gov. in the second comment above, has hit the worst of it. It’s not just us they torment. If you read widely and have a healthy curiosity about things like History, Science, Medicine, or lesser but still complex subjects like Aviation or Marine Architecture, you learn early on that the general interest mass media has very low standards.

    This is bad enough, and easy to laugh off when it’s just an egregious bit of ignorance on something like the laws of Physics or the general subject of UFOs.

    Things get serious real quick, though, when journalists apply their hard earned ignorance to subjects that have real impact on real people. When your job is to inform the populace, but you don’t have the skills and mental habits necessary to inform YOURSELF, I think you are guilty of malpractice.

    When Americans are left in an information poor state, we start to see things like Gun Control advocates, Vaccination Resisters, Holocaust Deniers, and the rest of the Legions of the Damned.

    There is an old saying that “ignorance of the law is no excuse”. Neither is ignorance of reality. We have a DUTY to inform ourselves. Anyone who doesn’t agree really shouldn’t go on perpetrating their opinions on the rest of us.

    • MSM has been bought and paid for since the late 1950s, when the CIA placed their own guys or controlled puppets in charge of all three TV networks, and most major newspaper chains. The little dogs want to be like the big dogs, so they seldom need to be bought off. But if necessary, it happens.

  8. A major part of the problem is the silofication of media. If the economics and technology of media encouraged relatively few mass-market players who fought over the same market comprised of the general public they and their reporters would have an incentive to present the most accurate and balanced view they could, it wouldn’t be perfect but they would have to worry that if they tilted too far one way or the other, or got a reputation for incompetence, they would lose viewers to their competitors, who were all competing for the same eyes.

    Now, with the proliferation of cable news and the internet the economics and technology of media encourage smaller, more narrowly tailored audiences. The good news is that everyone gets a voice, the bad news is that there is no incentive, and in fact a healthy disincentive to present a broad picture because your core audience will view you as a sell-out without a sufficient influx of new viewers (who are in their own silo) to compensate.

    There is no penalty for being wrong, or even lying, so long as you say the “right” thing for your audience. You see this on MSNBC and FOX, and you see it on the internet. Those reporters are not likely to get smart on guns for no other reason than doing so, and presenting a view of the news that doesn’t jibe with the received wisdom of their publication could harm their career.

  9. This is a common mistake made by young people, even within the cohort that cares about liberty. They’re young, inexperienced and too trusting. They think the job of the media is to “inform” and “report.”

    Naive little waifs. They’re so adorable and cute when they’re young.

    When you get to my age, you realize that newspaper editors, reporters and photographers are all lying sacks of crap. I’ve been all over the US and read dozens and dozens of daily metro newspapers. I’ve met only one paper’s management that actually cared about facts and truly informing the public, and even they made mistakes (the Las Vegas Review Journal).

    My wife still likes to read an occasional newspaper, and if it is left laying around the house for even a day, she gets treated to one of my rants about how I hate physical newspaper as much as I hate the mendacious frauds who publish them.

    It used to be that I’d read a newspaper and find a factual error on every page. If you’re well read enough in technology, science, medicine, business/accounting etc, you can find errors in every newspaper very quickly. The liberal arts majors with journalism graduate degrees who infest the world of the media know nothing about anything tangible, and it is easy to spot their factual mistakes.

    Today, it is even worse. They not only know nothing about the subject matter on which they’re writing, they know as little about English grammar and usage. I find spelling errors in papers routinely now. It used to be that if you found an error of grammar or spelling in a newspaper, you’d call the copy desk and they’d be embarrassed about these errors. Today, they don’t care in the slightest.

  10. I like the end part of the video, but i have to keep reminding everyone in CAPS:

    THEY DON’T BELIEVE THAT OWNING A FIREARM IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT. NO ONE THAT BELIEVES SOMETHING IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT WOULD TREAT IT THIS WAY. IF THEY SAY “BUT” AFTER SAYING THEY BELIEVE IN THE 2A, THEN THEY’RE JUST LYING. THEY’RE NOT INTERESTED IN PROTECTING IT BECAUSE THEY DON’T BELIEVE IN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

    Alright sorry about the caps, but you gotta keep that in mind. They have one goal, the abolition of the civilian ownership of firearms. Period. Remember that when you want to compromise in THEIR direction.

  11. We are simply chattel to be managed and used as the overlords see fit.

    They want us fat, happy and defenseless. Because it suits them.

    They will do whatever is necessary to make it happen. The media is just the propoganda arm of the overlords. They are simply part of the process of smoothing the path for the overlords to do their dirty work.

    • If I say stuff like that, people here say I need professional help. It must be because you’re a woman, Mina.

  12. The media cares about honestly reporting the facts every bit as much as Feinstein cares about the 2nd Amendment. If you are sufficiently stupid to believe the former, you’ll probably also be duped by the latter.

  13. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d much rather listen to a well-spoken, attractive woman than some OFWG. Bet the rest of the country would as well. NICE JOB NRA!

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