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Press partisanship gets ugly in revived gun rights debate
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The current verbal slugfest over gun rights and responsibilities versus public safety has brought the Second Amendment squarely into the spotlight, but at the same time, many are wondering whether those who make their living courtesy of the First Amendment are not exploiting one constitutionally-protected right to crush another.
The war against gun rights in the press is nothing new. The late Thomas Winship, former editor of the anti-gun Boston Globe and a columnist in Editor and Publisher, once authored a column in the latter publication that was headlined “Step up the war against guns.” In his diatribe – for that is what it was – Winship encouraged his press colleagues to engage in “a sustained newspaper crusade.” He called on editors to “Support all forms of gun licensing, in fact all causes the NRA opposes.”
It is time to square off against guns. We are talking about a sustained newspaper crusade.
At the time, I was on the editorial staff of the now-defunct Fishing & Hunting News in Seattle, and I fired off a letter to Editor & Publisher, which the magazine printed. I was not kind to Mr. Winship. Some time later, Reason magazine also took Winship to task.
Winship is gone, but the journalistic demagoguery that he was promoting is alive and well today. We’ve already discussed the despicably partisan treatment of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb during an MSNBC segment hosted by Hardball substitute host David Schuster.
When Gottlieb appeared on CNN with midday anchor Rich Sanchez, he was treated a little better, but both Sanchez and Schuster left viewers with no doubt about where they stand on the gun issue. It is both ironic and hypocritical of both cable network journalists to complain about people including Fox News’ Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, and talk jock Rush Limbaugh, yet demonstrate the very intolerance for an opposing view for which they criticize those other guys.
But the media’s war against gun rights is not confined to cable news networks.
Fox News analyist Juan Williams with National Public Radio candidly wrote in his current blog that, “I’d ban guns – big and little – for private use in the USA.” He would require that firearms be “kept on military bases or at places where target shooting is practiced.”
In a recent interview with Attorney General Eric Holder, CBS’ Katie Couric quizzed him about gun control in a segment that seemed more designed to promote renewal of the ban on so-called “assault weapons” and regulate gun shows than to merely ask Holder’s position; subtle to many viewers, but hardly lost on people who monitor the gun issue.
When Associated Press writer Deborah Hastings did a piece on the aftermath of the Pittsburgh shooting, it was headlined “Licensed to kill? Gunmen in killings had permits.” The story overlooked the fact that millions of American citizens have concealed carry permits or licenses, and they haven’t harmed anyone.
Back in January 1992, when Michael Gartner was president of NBC News, he did a piece for USA Today headlined “Glut of Guns: What Can We Do About Them?” In it, he wrote, “There is no reason for anyone in this country, anyone except a police officer or a military person, to buy, to own, to have, to use a handgun.”
I now think the only way to control handgun use in this country is to prohibit the guns. And the only way to do that is to change the Constitution. -- Michael Gartner, former NBC News president, Jan. 16, 1992 USA Today
Recently, the small Mukilteo Banner, published in a suburban community north of Seattle, published an editorial that could have been written by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Publisher Paul Archipley complained that Washington State’s gun laws “are absurdly weak.”
The Media Research Center and News Busters keep an eye on this sort of thing, and my colleague Daniel White wrote about it the other day.
The bias in professional journalism against the Second Amendment is alarming, and if it does not concern newsmen and their editors, it should.
Nobody is suggesting that newspapers cannot take editorial positions against gun-related crime, nor is anyone arguing that people, even reporters and editors, cannot have a personal distaste for firearms, and choose not to have them in their homes.
What is being suggested is that those who don’t want firearms in their own lives should stop promoting the notion that everyone live by their standards. In a nation of free speech, freedom of the press and a tradition of personal liberty, the press needs to acknowledge that this freedom extends to gun ownership, and that if we so willingly allow one civil right to be trampled, we better prepare for all of them to suffer.
Read the latest from other Gun Rights Examiners:
For more info: The Bias Against Guns
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