The News Media Is Biased Against the Positive Aspects of Gun Ownership

I thank bluesteel for the thought-provoking rebuttal. Admittedly, I believe that using only one case as a method to convey the media bias is not the most effective way. Therefore, I will use this round to illustrate the broader media bias which is present in the everyday news events involving guns. In effect, I will also address some of the points made by my opponent in his previous rebuttal and disprove them.In the same way, my opponent never proves that anyone in the media is PURPOSELY ignoring self-defense stories and PURPOSELY covering high-profile bad uses of guns, to INTENTIONALLY distort public perceptions.While I cannot read the media's minds, I can certainly provide a heap of evidence which would suggest that stories involving malicious usage of guns receive far more attention than the good uses. Furthermore, I can prove that the media purposely chooses to emphasize the negative aspects of guns in other manners than just accounts of incidents.First, I'd like to present the most blatantly extreme example of INTENTIONAL, CONFESSED media bias in reporting about guns. This incident was clearly meant to advance left-wing views of banning assault weapons, and was not just an honest mistake, but a clear case of intentionally falsified journalism in order to spread a viewpont held by CNN. In short, NRA president Wayne Lapierre was the one who called out CNN for deliberately faking a report on the danger of fully automatic assault weapons, the ban on which was set to expire next year. [1] CNN fired an automatic AK-47 at cinderblocks, but with the semiautomatic civilian example being intentionally shot into the ground to convince viewers that the banned version was so much more destructive. This epitomizes irresponsible, fabricated journalism, and correlates with the stance that the media has always possessed (albeit in a less obvious manner which I will explain). If this does not qualify as bias, I don't know what is. I believe that my opponent will be hard-pressed to deny the bias lying in this incident, nor will he be able to find a similar example of an intentionally fabricated story by a major media outlet used to advance a pro-gun standpoint.A gun being used in a home invasion, or to kill one non-famous person, is going to get the same coverage as a gun used to protect a home in self-defense. My opponent's complaint is unfair. National news syndicates don't report local incidents.Really? I have evidence which would suggest otherwise. That is, evidence that suggests that they report local incidents of gun tragedies, rather than acts of crime prevention with guns. To prove this, I will recall my opponent's reference to thearmedcitizen.com, a website run by the NRA. That alone should point to the limited audience such a website will receive. My opponent also presents the erroneous claim that "if the media was biased, they would refuse to report these incidents at all". Bias is not necessarily a complete exclusion of the opposing side; it is merely a clear preference for one side over the other. My opponent's reference to The Armed Citizen only furthers the argument of bias against guns. This site along with its counterpart keepandbeararms.com, serve as the two major archives of defensive gun use incidents. John Lott did extensive research into the composition of these stories reported on here, and at the time of his research a shocking 40% of the archived stories during 2001 on these two sites had not even been published in top 100 newspapers. [2] There were just 37 present in the top 10, with 26 being published in either the Houston Chronicle or Dallas Morning News. Now, my opponent may further argue that local stories should not merit coverage by these major papers. Yet, statistics on the nation's three top newspapers suggest that gun crimes have received such expanded coverage. The same cannot be said for defensive gun stories. In the same year of 2001:-New York Times published 104 articles on gun crimes that year, for a total of 50,745 words on the subject (gun crimes meaning actual reportings of gun violence). Roughly 1/3 of those stories were from outside the New York area. By contrast, there was only one 163-word story about a DGU in the New York area.-USA Today, which has no geographical limitations, contained 5,660 words on gun crimes and zero on DGUs.-Washington Post contained 46,884 words on gun crime (1/4 from outside the DC area) as opposed to three stories on DGU amounting to 953 words.In the entire top 10 national newspapers, only 13 other incidents of DGU were reported, compared to a countless number of stories on the other end of the gun violence spectrum. My opponent's claim that local news stories about gun crimes receive equal coverage as DGU is clearly refuted by this wide-reaching examination of major newspapers. Why these stories of gun crimes prove any more newsworthy than cases of DGU is beyond explanation, yet the news media still chooses to show an overwhelming preference for reporting the negative usage of guns over the positives. This preference does not stop at reporting gun-involved incidents, however. In the New York Times. the stories relating to discussions of gun policies and gun research were COMPLETELY slanted towards the anti-gun side. Nine experts who, through their own previous works, had expressed strongly pro-gun control views, were cited a total of twenty times. Gary Kleck, the man behind the "2.5 million DGUs per year" statistic, was the only expert who had a somewhat neutral stance on the issue, and he was cited once. How many academics against gun laws were cited in the two year period assessed? Zlich. Not that they are non-existent. After all, the year before data was collected for this particular assesment, 294 academics had come together to write a letter informing Congress that the new proposed gun laws were "ill-advised". The New York Times represents unbalanced journalism which displayed an undeniable bias in not letting a single academic opposing gun control express their views. [2] This ensured that the general public remains uninformed about the potential benefits of guns.Similar statistics to the ones presented for newspapers manifest within TV reporting on the subject. The stories of 2001 on the three major news networks: 190,000 words in stories on gun crimes, with only one 580 word story about an off-duty officer preventing a school shooting. Despite the fact that numerous estimates place the number of DGUs at between 1 to 3 million per year in the United States (a rate much greater than the number of gun homicides), the coverage reflects a much different story. Despite the fact that many DGUs provide newsworthy events, such as a life saved by the defensive use of a gun, the print and TV media chooses to overwhelmingly ignore such cases and instead report on the typical case of a tragic death attributed to guns. Furthermore, just as the NY Times likes to ignore the opinions of the academics who contradict the anti-gunners, TV exhibits the same bias. Good Morning America is easily the worst offender in terms of media bias. Despite stories of heroism with guns in that year, such as a killer in Michigan being stopped from firing at passing cars by a concealed permit holder, GMA opted instead to broadcast less newsworthy incidents which were rather typical incidents of gun violence, incidents which shouldn't have made it to the national news if the one in Michigan didn't. [2] Yet this kind of blatant preference epitomizes the stance of the media today: galvanize public sentiments about guns while not allowing the other side of the issue to come through. The CNN story was an all too obvious example, and the unbalanced coverage by other major media outlets accomplishes the same bias, albeit in a less obvious manner. I have provided evidence that proves the media bias, it is up to Con to say otherwise.[1]http://www.freerepublic.com...[2]http://www.gunlaws.com...