Gun shy or gun lie
NPR’s On The Media has a good piece regarding gun coverage in the press and how it’s quite often wrong. Some snippets:
JOHN SOLOMON: In a column last summer, Okrent wrote that gun owners are, “among the groups the Times treats as strange objects to be examined on an laboratory slide.” For them,” he continued, “a walk through this paper can make you feel you’re traveling in a strange and forbidding world.”
Needs counts only one hunter on a floor of 170 newsroom employees. That, despite the fact that four in ten Americans say they own at least one gun. It’s a disconnect that makes this man’s job much easier.
Big focus on hunting. And my favorite:
DENNIS HENNIGAN: It does not help when you have editorial writers make statements that appear to be hostile to gun ownership per se.
JOHN SOLOMON: Dennis Hennigan is the legal director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
DENNIS HENNIGAN: That just plays into the NRA’s hands, and it allows them to again reinforce their case that there is this conspiracy essentially against gun ownership, and that they are the guardians of freedom.
No, Mr. Hennigan, there is a conspiracy and you guys lead it. Not the media. The issue I have is that the media run screaming from the NRA yet they are too eager to get quotes from outfits like the Brady Bunch who are hostile to gun owners.
Via Smijer.
