Posted by
John Caile on Wednesday, September 02, 2009 10:40:17 AM
GUEST EDITORIAL: False reports about guns
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Monday, August 31, 2009
Many media outlets have misfired about guns. Countless newspapers
and television networks -- from CBS to MSNBC -- have misreported that
conservative protesters are threatening President Obama with guns at
public events. It hasn't happened. [Even the Secret
Service agrees that this legal conduct has presented no threat to the President.]
In Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a gun, William Kostric, joined
an Aug. 11 health care protest. This was blocks away and hours before
Mr. Obama's town-hall meeting in that city. Mr. Kostric was given
permission to be on church property where the protest occurred and was
not at the place the president visited. What most of the coverage left
out was that Mr. Kostric didn't carry his gun only for the protest; he
legally carries a gun with him all the time for protection.
While the media regularly used terms such as "hotheads" to
mischaracterize the situation, the coverage ignored that union members
who opposed the protest had attacked Mr. Kostric and a friend, kicking,
pushing and spitting on them. Despite violence against him by Mr.
Obama's supporters, Mr. Kostric did not draw his gun or threaten
anyone.
On the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric asked, "Are we really still
debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the
president is speaking?" Deliberately or not, she got the facts wrong.
As we know, Mr. Kostric did bring a gun to the church, and besides, the
president was not there and never was scheduled to speak there. Mr.
Obama spoke at a separate event at a local high school at a different
time.
Not letting facts get in the way of her hysterical story line,
Ms. Couric linked Mr. Kostric's gun to "fear and frankly ignorance
drown[ing] out the serious debate that needs to take place about an
issue that affects the lives of millions of people."
In another case in Arizona, a black man staged an event with a local
radio host and carried a semiautomatic rifle a few blocks away from
another Obama town-hall meeting. According to the radio station, the
staged event was "partially motivated to do so because of the
controversy surrounding William Kostric." This occurrence was not an
example of an outraged gun-toting Obama protester, but a stunt to
garner attention for a shock jock. Of course, this inconvenient truth
was ignored by most news outlets.
MSNBC misrepresented the facts to try to back up a bogus claim about
racism being behind opposition to Mr. Obama's agenda. On Donny
Deutsch's Aug. 18 show about the Arizona town-hall meeting, the
producers aired a clip of the anonymous black man carrying the
so-called assault rifle -- but the network edited the tape so the man's
race was obscured.
Truth be damned, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer [ignoring the glaring fact that the man with the gun was BLACK] said,
"There are questions whether this has a racial overtone. I mean, here
you have a man of color in the presidency and white people [emphasis ours] showing up
with guns strapped to their waists." Another commentator on the same
show worried about the "anger about a black person being president."
The supposed result: "You know we see these hate groups rising up." [What "hate groups?" Ooops, I forgot - never let the truth get in the way of your agenda!]
MSNBC's irresponsible behavior is more than just bad journalism; it
sows distrust between races. Ernest Hancock, the radio host who staged
the event, was hoping to get some free publicity for himself and his
show. Whatever one thinks of this PR stunt, it had nothing to do with
race. MSNBC misrepresented a black man carrying a gun as a white man to
invent a racial dynamic that didn't exist.
Media disinformation about guns is a sad sign of the drastic action
[many] will take to undermine support for gun rights for law-abiding
citizens.