[b]contd.[/b]
Let me throw some numbers out.
· A study by the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group, found that during a two-year period (July 1, 1997, to June 30, 1999), ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN ran 357 stories in favor of gun control, compared with 36 against, a ratio of almost 10 to one. The biggest "offender" was ABC's "Good Morning America," which ran 92 anti-gun stories and one pro-gun story.
· A study by University of Michigan doctoral candidate Brian A. Patrick, released in June 1999, found that the National Rifle Association was portrayed negatively in editorial and op-ed pieces 87 percent of the time (as opposed to 52 percent negative collectively for four other citizens' lobbying groups, including the NAACP and ACLU). More ominously, Patrick's study documented a clear anti-gun bias in the news coverage of the NRA by comparing things such as use of descriptive language, use of quotes and use of photos.
Most telling to me are the journalists who are not allowed to attend the NSSF seminars. In one case, a journalist had agreed to come. He said he had argued with his producers that there was a need to balance their coverage of firearms. Later in the week, he called to cancel, and after extracting a promise to never reveal his name or media outlet, said that his producers had nixed his visit on the grounds that they were "unwilling to present any positive firearms stories," and the best way to do that was just not assign any journalists to stories that could turn out to have a pro-gun spin. We talked for a long time, because he clearly felt he had walked into an ethical dilemma--which, of course, he had. Substitute "Hispanic" or "Democrat" for "firearms" in the above quote and try to imagine the political firestorm that would result.
In the end, he didn't attend: "They made it clear to me that my job was on the line," he said. A newbie reporter at a metropolitan daily? Nope--a veteran national political correspondent, whose name you would recognize, working for one of the most prestigious national news outlets in the country. And his is not an isolated case.
What is going on here? Do the time-honored rules of journalistic objectivity apply in every case except firearms? Have we, as journalists, reached such an overwhelming consensus that "guns are bad" that we're willing to look the other way while a journalistic tradition that's taken more than a hundred years to build is methodically disassembled?
After one of the seminars, a writer for a national newsweekly asked for a few minutes of my time. He had, coincidentally, covered the Columbine tragedy and had approached the seminar with open skepticism.
"I now understand why you guys hate us so much," he told me. "We get everything wrong, don't we?"