Submerging Media - Navy Yard Shooting Shows American Media's Decline

Cowboy Confessional ^ | 9/23/2013 | Guy Smith

[guyshomenet]

Journalism isn’t what is used to be, and it wasn’t great to begin with.

Last week a man who heard voices in his head followed the advice from the voices in Joe Biden’s head about armament, bought a shotgun, hacked off the barrel and killed a bunch of people in the Washing Navy Yard. As with all such incidents, two completely predictable occurrences came to pass. First, after waiting for facts to emerge, the sanity of the suspect was shown to be non-existent. Second, the gun control industry did not wait for facts to emerge.

Neither did the media.

One complaint I have received about my book Shooting The Bull was that I did not expose how the media propagandizes. My reply has always been that to write a concise tome about media tactics for misinforming the public would take more time than I have left on this planet, and I’m still (relatively) young and healthy. Deforestation legislation would prohibit cutting down enough trees to print the first volume.

Because the media misleads, most of the public distrusts the media and the public’s opinion has steadily deteriorated over time, though not with the stunning acceleration of congress’s declining status. That the media and congress maintain an enduring carnal relationship should then surprise nobody.

Journalists were once appreciated for taking the time and extra effort to validate information. As witnessed by recent events, the media has disposed of these precautions along with integrity and perspective. Sometimes this is due to the competitive urge to be first, which now supplants the desire to be accurate. In other instances it is the desire to demagog and propagandize their preferred policies. Neither case is “journalism” and as such we should stop using the word to describe large swaths of American media.

Take as a small case how many in the media publicly stated that the Navy Yard shooter used an AR-15 sporting rifle. Patient people who waited for facts learned this was not true, but it did not stop media members from Piers Morgan to the New York Daily News from proclaiming it as reality (and failing to recant once the truth was established). Being the most popular rifle in the States – with estimates ranging from three to ten million in circulation – it has become the poster child of the gun control industry and thus the symbol of their firearm prohibition campaigns. That certain members of the media selected the same target indicates that they are not journalist.

But “journalist” sounds so much nicer than “perjurer.”

Another interesting aspect to this tale is that the rush to inaccuracy echoes directives within the gun control industry’s new master playbook Preventing Gun Violence Through Effective Messaging, expertly deconstructed by a civil rights lawyer. One passage of this field guide to gun control agitprop is to not wait for facts to emerge, but to charge the cameras and echo gun control policy while fear and horror is at its apex. That some in the media follow this prescription may be accidental, but likely is not. Many studies in the 1980s and 90s not only proved, but actually quantified how biased reporting is. I ran across these studies because gun control was on the list of topics researchers monitored. The biasing of language (“advocate” versus “lobbyist”) or the amount of uncontested airtime offered one group against another demonstrated a lack of dispassionate news nonintervention.

And this was before Chris Mathews started experiencing lower extremity sensations (let’s pray he starts to experience some in the upper regions as well).

How are Americans to cope with media mendacity? Some have found news sources they trust more than others, and unfortunately consume that content in isolation. Others though, especially the digital generation, more broadly sample news and find greater perspective. Using tools such as Google News allows individuals to triangulate facts, which leads the next generation to some uncomfortable conclusions. They recognize that reporting is piss poor and amplified by agenda. Youngsters also sense that they have to do their own digging in order to make informed decisions.

Politicos are not making it easy on them.

Last week’s mass shooting exposed a new obstacle to understanding, namely that some ideologues are attempting to redefine “mass shooting.” Traditionally this has meant a shooting in a public place (not a private home, crack house or unincorporated dungeon). To inflate “mass shooting” numbers, broader definitions are now being created outside of criminological circles. Younger news consumers who troll through multiple sources are now likely to obtain inconsistent information, which will lower their already prostrate opinion of the media.

The media seems intent on digging its own grave, to which a cynical friend of mine replied “Can I buy them a bigger shovel?”

I won’t belabor or bemoan what has happened to the media. It has never been unbiased, as any reading of newspapers from our founding era shows. But the rate of abatement of basic journalistic principles is increasing, foreshadowing a new media composed primarily of the people, ingesting, filtering, debunking and finally propagating the pertinent data. This beautiful chaos looks ugly from the outside, but early indications are it will work well … perhaps better than CBS News ever did.

[Venturer]

The News Media has an awful problem with truth when it concerns National Stories. Local stuff not so bad.

[mbarker12474]

The national stories come from the wire services.

But realize that there is a local news desk editor who places these wire service stories on the air or on the page.

[Tenacious 1]

I won’t belabor or bemoan what has happened to the media. It has never been unbiased, as any reading of newspapers from our founding era shows.

There is truth to this statement. But early on, all media was first and foremost suspicious of government in the interest of the citizenry. Today, much of the media is active in advancing opinions held by the liberal government.

[Izzy Dunne]

Journalism isn’t what is used to be,

Yeah, they used to proofread what they printed:

a bunch of people in the Washing Navy Yard

[Makana]

I’m ashamed to say that I have begun to watch Aljazeera on a regular basis. Although one needs to keep one’s filter on, it actually has reporters in the field in the US and internationally.

[CIDKauf]

You are surely not far from losing your mind. Try Fox News.

[CaptainAmiigaf]

“The media at first was suspicious of the government in the interest of the citizenry”.
Today, the MSM is very suspicious of the CITIZENRY in the fanatical interest of the GOVERNMENT.
(Just changing the order of a couple of the words)

[The Antiyuppie]

Journalists and politicians were SUPPOSED to be, at best, enemies...

[The Antiyuppie]

Oh, I wouldn’t be ashamed at all. I watch NBC News. Know Your Enemy.

[lentulusgracchus]

[Art.] Second, the gun control industry did not wait for facts to emerge. Neither did the media.

Foul! Fifteen yards for pleonasm.

</Bill Buckley>

[lentulusgracchus]

Try Fox News.

The Houston Fox TV affiliate seems to have fallen into the hands of the Prog wing of the DemonRat Party.

Their anchor is a Hispanic black guy who sounds like Daniel Ortega.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

“Second, the gun control industry did not wait for facts to emerge.

Neither did the media.”

They are on and the same.

Puppets on the same string.