Set your dials
Tonight, MTV is set to do a show on gun owners:
MTV, Music Television, has become known more for its “reality” shows and political activism than for playing music videos over the past decade. That trend will continue Thursday night with the airing of the latest episode of the network’s “True Life” documentary series: “True Life: I’m a Gun Owner.” While some firearms enthusiasts are giving MTV the benefit of the doubt, many gun rights advocates are already questioning the objectivity of the program.
[snip]
The Dec. 29 episode examines how “guns are changing the lives of four young people in very different ways,” according to a promotional “blurb” emailed to Cybercast News Service by MTV publicist Diane Domondon.
“While most gun owners are responsible, on average every hour someone between the ages of 15 and 28 is cut down by a bullet,” the promotional statement continued. “Whether it’s for protection, crime or sport, guns are having a deep effect on the youth of our nation.”
Update: It’s pre-loaded with bias:
The program features a convicted felon, a gang member, a hunter and a crime victim who is now an advocate of armed self-defense to present the various sides of the gun debate. Several gun rights advocates immediately challenged MTV’s math.
“It’s a bit offensive that 50 percent of the people they’ve chosen to feature as being ‘gun owners’ are people who are obviously breaking the law and probably acquired their firearms illegally,” Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America said of the gang member and the convict. “When you look at the statistics, it’s only a fraction of 1 percent of the ‘gun owners’ in the country who ever use firearms in an illegitimate way.”
December 30th, 2005 at 9:24 am
[…] I mentioned MTV’s show on gun owners. Haven’t watched it yet but TiVo grabbed it for me. Anyway, Bitter reports something interesting: I was called to be on the show. I’m kinda shocked it took them so long to air it since they initially called me in early 2004. Anyway, since I didn’t kill any animals or people, I wasn’t considered a representative of what they wanted to show as the gun owning population in the final cut. Funny since I thought that those qualities made me quite representative of the average gun owner. I also gave them the names of several promising young shooters who compete and are doing well, but I guess they weren’t stereotypical enough for MTV either. […]