We’re used to seeing the big media outlets be clueless about guns while simultaneously pretending to be the arbiters of truth on gun issues. The fact that they always seem to come down in favor of restricting our right to keep and bear arms is indicative of their bias on the issue.
Bias exists in who they call experts, for example. They often cite groups like Giffords, Brady, and Everytown as if they’re not active gun control organizations, while generally presenting groups like the NRA, GOA, or NSSF as something else entirely.
But it’s not just what they include that demonstrates bias. It’s also what they don’t talk about.
To bring up this point, we have this piece from the Washington Times about the coverage of a congressional race and an associated debate.
Fortunately, News 12 provides access to the entire February debate. I watched it. My source was correct: Mr. Suozzi advanced misinformed and arguably authoritarian positions that were never challenged in the debate or by news organizations covering the discussion.
Namely, an audience member asked a question about guns during the program. Ms. Pilip said that she opposed automatic weapons (which have long been illegal nationwide) and “weapons of war.”
Mr. Suozzi then pounced, declaring that “semiautomatic weapons are the problem.” He hectored her with his view that “semiautomatics are the problem” and demanded, “Will you vote to ban semiautomatic weapons?”
Perhaps most amazing in this saga is the lack of news coverage of this pivotal debate and special election. To my knowledge, no Long Island, New York City or national news organization reported on Mr. Suozzi’s shocking desire to ban semiautomatic weapons nationwide.
Daily News columnist Harry Siegel mentioned the debate’s exchange on guns but never commented on the obvious strongman implications of Mr. Suozzi’s proposals.
My hypothesis is that many reporters and editors (especially in the Northeast) have never sought to understand the Second Amendment and gun issues.
To at least some of them, the distinctions between an automatic, semiautomatic, single-shot or even ancient blunderbuss guns are unimportant. Guns are a de facto scourge to them.
Entirely probable, really.
However, on the issue of bias, simply omitting coverage, particularly an in-depth examination of a political position espoused by a candidate during a debate, is a choice. It’s one generally driven, however, by whether or not someone thinks it’s newsworthy. In the minds of these journalists, such as they are, a pronouncement like this isn’t actually newsworthy.
After all, all right-thinking people want to ban the scourge of semi-automatic weapons, right?
Except that a ban on such firearms would include firearms Kamala Harris’s Glock. Whether they understand that or are ignorant of it is largely irrelevant.
Now, the media bias we see here isn’t universal. At local news outlets all over the nation, there are actual journalists who will cover such comments and dig into them in depth. It’s just that these reporters rarely make it out of the local level. They lack the right politics, though I’m sure editors at the big papers and stations would just call it a lack of “hard-hitting journalism.”
Hard-hitting, of course, just means anything that takes issue with what conservatives might favor.
Whether this is subconscious or not is irrelevant, the result is the same.
When it comes to guns, these same people all think the same way. They’re not that bothered by talk of banning any kind of guns because, in their mind, all that would be is a good start.
So when a candidate calls for a ban of an entire category of firearms, they don’t even blink. It’s a non-event, all because they can’t imagine anyone thinking that would be news.
