Dave Workman of [url]www.gunweek.com[/url] is the author of this article.

Subject: [Gun_Talk] Caught In Collusion? Seattle TV ‘Gun Show Expose’ Exposed

Caught In Collusion? Seattle TV ‘Gun Show Expose’ Exposed
By Dave Workman
Senior EditorGun Week NewsDecember 12, 2002

An undercover story by a Seattle, WA television news team that purported
to expose a so-called “gun show loophole” by showing film of the legal
private purchase of an AR-15 rifle at a gun show set off a firestorm
after Gun Week uncovered a direct link between the gun buyer and a major
gun control organization.
Western Washington gun activists now argue that the investigative news
team, led by a reporter whose earlier work at a television station in
Oklahoma City resulted in a $6.5 million defamation judgment, colluded
with an operative of Washington CeaseFire to produce the report.
Less than 24 hours after the report aired on KIRO-TV’s evening news
broadcast, a Gun Week investigation revealed that the individual who had
agreed to purchase the rifle while being filmed with a hidden camera is
the brother of an official at CeaseFire, the state’s largest anti-gun
group. KIRO is the CBS affiliate in Seattle.
The buyer, Justin Martin, was identified by a CeaseFire staffer as the
brother of DeAnna Martin, who served as interim executive director of
the group this past summer. On camera, Martin claimed to be a gun owner
and avid shooter. His connection to CeaseFire was never mentioned.
It was not explained whether KIRO actually did the covert filming, or
whether Justin and a companion provided the film.
Martin was also the subject of a similar story that appeared on
Seattle’s KING the local NBC affiliate about two weeks prior to the
KIRO “expose.” In that piece, his connection to CeaseFire was also not
revealed, but KING reporter Deborah Feldman confirmed to Gun Week that
she knows his connection to CeaseFire. She said she contacted him, with
“some assistance,” and that he did not initiate the KING story.
But at least one local talk show host, John Carlson at KVI, suggested on
the air that CeaseFire may have been “shopping this story around” to
local news organizations.
The KIRO piece aired Monday, Nov. 18. An undercover cameraman attended
the gun show with Martin, held at the Southwest Washington fairgrounds
in Centralia, Lewis County. Martin purchased the rifle without having to
go through a background check. It was a legal, private sale, as
acknowledged by award-winning KIRO investigative reporter Chris Halsne.
KIRO had promoted the broadcast for several days prior to airing the
report, even noting on its website how the station’s “hidden cameras
expose how easy it is to buy a sniper's assault rifle at local gun
shows. No waiting, no background checks. A Team 7 Investigation that
reveals the gun control loophole that puts you at risk.”
However, Lewis County Sheriff John McCroskey told Gun Week that when he
was invited to view a tape of the undercover purchase, he did not react
the way that a KIRO reporter apparently expected.
“I pointed out to them that it’s a gun show, and the sale was legal,”
McCroskey said. “>From their promo (for the story), it is clear they had
an agenda.”
Halsne denied there was any agenda, other than to illustrate “what
current laws allow.” He said he did not personally do the McCroskey
interview.
“It is a big national debate,” Halsne said. “We simply went to show…the
simplicity of purchasing this AR-15.”
But Halsne’s remarks during the televised report suggest otherwise to
angry gun owners. After alluding to “bodies and blood-filled morgues
from Washington, DC to Tacoma, Washington,” Halsne asserted, “Felons,
guys angry at their wives, mental patients all are welcome here at the
Chehalis gun show.”
Leading into the Halsne report, a KIRO news anchor stated, “We show you
how easy it is to skirt the law and walk away with a loaded gun.”
Later, Halsne stated, “KIRO Team 7 investigators discovered anyone can
legally buy an AR-15 semi-automatic.”
Gun rights activists, including Joe Waldron, executive director of the
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and a director
on the Washington Arms Collectors board, are furious. He said gun shows
do not “welcome” felons or mental patients, noting instead that such
people are barred from gun shows.
Waldron also said “nobody walks out of a gun show with a loaded gun.”
Loaded firearms are strictly forbidden at gun shows. He said there are
several categories of disqualified persons who may not legally buy or
possess any kind of gun.
Several gun owners promised to file formal complaints with KIRO. Some
indicated they would also be contacting the Washington News Council, an
independent media fairness group founded about four years ago to promote
accuracy and balance in regional news. This mediation group operates a
website at: www.wanewscouncil.org.
Waldron suggested that Martin’s appearance on two Seattle newscasts with
essentially the same story may be a CeaseFire strategy to create public
hysteria about gun shows just six weeks before the new Legislature
convenes. Anti-gun show legislation has been a priority with CeaseFire
for the past three years, and Waldron sees no coincidence that the
reports aired, with the same individual. He called the KIRO story
“sensational yellow journalism.”
Halsne’s reporting has been challenged before.

In 1998, while working as
an investigative reporter for KWTV in Oklahoma City another CBS
affiliate Halsne did a series of reports focusing on allegations that a
local veterinarian had drugged a race horse in 1997 and caused the death
of another horse in 1994, during a time that he inspected horses for
races in Oklahoma and New Mexico. According to the Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press, Halsne reported on several occasions that the
veterinarian had been “accused” of drugging the horse, and that the
doctor had been “suspected” of killing a racehorse. In fact, no such
accusations had been brought against the veterinarian in a federal
lawsuit involving the drugged horse, the Reporters Committee noted. The
veterinarian, Dr. H.L. Mitchell, was not a defendant in that lawsuit,
nor had he been associated with any serious wrongdoing, the Committee
reported. Halsne reportedly relied on court papers filed in the federal
lawsuit, and allegations made by a horse racing official, as a basis for
his on-air statements about Mitchell, who subsequently sued the
television station for defamation.
Mitchell did lose his New Mexico owner’s license for practicing
veterinary medicine illegally in the state, but not for killing a horse,
the Committee report clarified.
Last year, an Oklahoma jury awarded Mitchell $6.5 million in a libel
verdict that was upheld by an appeals court in September. In its ruling,
the appeals court said Halsne did “not truly and fairly report the
allegations” contained in the federal lawsuit.
The Reporters Committee noted, in discussing the Appeals Court ruling,
that “Although he had read the complaint…Halsne failed to clarify in his
report that the accusations in the lawsuit were aimed at someone other
than Mitchell.”
Halsne told Gun Week that the rifle purchased in Centralia was placed in
a locked cabinet, but he did not elaborate. He used it as a prop in the
report. He said the KIRO news team was accompanied by people who were
not employees of the station, but who do regularly attend gun shows. He
did not directly answer whether any of them were members of, operatives
for, or employed by Washington CeaseFire.
In the KIRO report, Martin was identified simply as “Justin.” But
Martin’s earlier appearance on KING leaves Waldron convinced the stories
were instigated by CeaseFire as part of an anti-gun show campaign
strategy. Waldron recorded the KING segment, in which Martin complained
about the ease with which he purchased a rifle at a gun show. He was
shown in that report with an SKS-type rifle.
Halsne seemed genuinely surprised that McCroskey wrote a column about
the experience for his local newspaper before the story aired. He
contended that McCroskey’s on-air remarks represent “a very well
respected view” and that “helps us balance the story.”McCroskey said the
news team brought the video to his office for a comment, a distance of
about 90 miles from Seattle. Lewis County owns the fairgrounds and
actually contracts with an independent manager to operate the gun show.
“I agreed to the interview with them because I thought it would be a lot
of fun,” McCroskey said. “I really don’t talk to the media much
anymore.”
After viewing the tape, McCroskey was astonished when the reporter
apparently did not want to accept his explanation that the sale was
perfectly legal.
“All they wanted to talk about was the gun show loophole,” Sheriff
McCroskey recalled. “They didn’t want to listen to the fact that it is
not against the law, or that there are a lot of criminals out there now
who are not being prosecuted for having a gun.”
He said the KIRO reporter apparently wanted a much stronger reaction.
“They acknowledged it was a perfectly legal transaction,” the sheriff
said. “That didn’t seem to bother them. They just seemed to want me to
be outraged that this perfectly legal transaction occurred. Well, I’ve
got enough real crime to deal with. What law-abiding people do is not a
concern to the police. We’re involved in (dealing with) crime, not in
dealing with law-abiding citizens.”
Recently elected to his third term as sheriff of the rural southwest
Washington county, McCroskey said he asked the reporter if he was a
convicted felon, or subject to a domestic violence restraining order;
two things that would have disqualified him from making the purchase.
The experience so infuriated the sheriff that he returned to his office
and wrote the column.
McCroskey pulled no punches, concluding that the only concern he now has
is that there is a “liberal reporter with a gun.”
“There is no question that they want to tie it (the gun show purchase)
to the sniper in D.C.,” McCroskey observed. “This is a good example of
‘National Enquirer journalism’.”
In his column, McCroskey asserted that, “I don’t believe restricting
law-abiding citizens’ ownership of firearms does anything but make them
easier victims.”
He told Gun Week that if it is KIRO’s agenda to eliminate gun shows, it
would not help reduce crime.
“If you stopped having gun shows,” McCroskey said, “the reduction in
crime would be so insignificant you would not notice it.”
Asked by KIRO if he would support gun show legislation to close the
perceived loophole, McCroskey said he explained there are already laws
against illegal gun sales, and that he has no confidence in the
Washington Legislature to solve a problem if one exists.
“I’ve come to believe,” he said, “that there is an orchestrated effort
to ignore (enforcement of existing) gun laws to make the matter appear
worse, so they can pass more legislation to take the guns away from
honest people.”

KIRO TV:

[u]Programing Dept[/u]
[email][email protected][/email]

[u]Inestigative Reporter Chris Halsne[/u]
[email][email protected][/email]

[U]KIRO Main Switchboard (M-F 9am - 5pm)[/U]
[red](206) 728-7777[/red]

KIRO 7
2807 Third Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121

Well, I fired off disgusted emails to KIRO and Chris "Truth, What's the Truth?" Halsne.  Lets bury them with the things. [pissed]

Grrrrr!  This kind of crap boils my blood.  

This is why I refuse to watch local news - nothing but sensationalistic, over-hyped stories designed to inflate ratings.  

I work in the EMS field, a couple weeks ago we had a real bad car accident, The media always calls the stations looking for info...I told the gal from KIRO that I will not give her any info, and That I will never do another interview for them again, ( I have been interview'd and on the news several times) she asked why I told her!...then hung up!

NO MORE KIRO IN MY HOUSE! and now Im pissed enuff to send more E-mail!...Those morons did not even return my e-mail from the last time[:D]

I would love to give A few $$$$ if any legal action comes of this...