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

Thanks to bluesteel for a very engaging and informative debate.My opponent concluded his last round with a statement chock-full of sweeping overgeneralizations and assumptions.My opponent's only real example is one CNN story...While the CNN story is not my only example, it certainly is a concrete one where the bias is obvious. I did describe this as an extreme incident, yet its bearing cannot be entirely discounted. In the time context of an expiring assault weapons ban, the story deliberately tried to galvanize emotional response to this fact. To call this a pro-gun story in any respect, as my opponent alluded to, is completely preposterous. Yes, the semi-auto AK-47 could have penetrated the cinderblock, but that was not the issue that CNN tried to get across. The point of the comparison was to deliberately exhibit a damage "gradient" between semi-auto and fully automatic weapons. If viewers, especially those who responsibly own semi-automatic rifles, would have seen a truly accurate comparison, they would have perceived little difference in stopping power between what they safely own and what is banned. Such a thought would destroy the credibility of banning automatic weapons, and CNN tried to avoid instilling such a thought by deliberately manipulating the study.Next, my opponent claims that this intentional example of bias is "counter-balanced" by a slew of factors, all of which are inaccurate.Appalachian Law School - My opponent has repeatedly accused Bridges and Lott of being in some kind of "conspiracy" to fabricate the details in order to advance a pro-gun viewpoint. Not only is this faulty reasoning, but it incorrectly assumes that Bridges is wrong and Besen is right. Both accounts of the incident have been placed in encyclopedic accounts of the shooting, so to say that one account is patently false is unfounded. Neither account has been proved or disproved without a doubt, so my opponent cannot reasonably assume that Bridges is lying. Furthermore, this incident does not negate the CNN story or the other examples of media bias against guns. As I said before, despite the fact that neither account was proved right or wrong beyond a reasonable doubt, the media accounts still chose to favor the student "pouncing on the gunman" rather than "pointing their guns".NRA-Backed Website - My opponent claims that because The Armed Citizen collected a story about a not guilty verdict in a shooting case, and "classified it as a DGU", the website should not be taken seriously. If one looks at this story, it was an acquittal of a student charged with attempted murder in an alleged case of SELF-DEFENSE. This is perfectly in-line with the site's intentions of collecting stories PERTAINING TO defensive gun-use. This does not limit their coverage to stories solely describing the details of a DGU. While on the subject of this website, I should also address my opponent's argument that based on what I had said earlier, "60% of DGUs are covered by a top 100 newspaper". First off, The Armed Citizen is in no way a comprehensive listing of all newsworthy DGUs (not just showing a gun). When I said 40% weren't covered, this means that 40% of the stories on that specific site weren't covered in a top 100 newspaper. Furthermore, if my opponent were to argue that these archived stories are adequate evidence to counter-balance the bias against guns, he would have to show that the geographical distribution of the reported occurrences is near uniformly correlating to population size. If a state like Nebraska has more covered stories than a large state like California or New York is not, then this does still indicate a media bias. After all, since it is well known that gun crimes (and logically DGUs) occur much more frequently in urban areas than rural ones, then clearly a large urban state being low on this list would indicate a systematic exclusion of stories covering beneficial usage of guns.Kleck Study - Perhaps this is the most strikingly overgeneralized of my opponent's points. He claims in his last sentence that this study contained DGU's that were all hostile gun displays. To single out the methodology of Kleck's study is inherently wrong. Studies obtaining lower figures for DGUs, such as the NCVS, also have their fair share of criticism. Hemenway's study is not exempt from it either. Furthermore, the Kleck study has absolutely nothing to do with media bias. It was a study published in a criminology journal, and has evolved into a frequently cited statistic. It was never intended to advance any viewpoint, as Kleck himself is a self-described liberal with moderate views on gun-control. My opponent tries to cite this "flawed" study as a refutation of the media bias, yet ignores the fact that it was intended for academic purposes and not to be cited by members of both sides of the gun debate.As can be seen, my opponent's closing points are faulty counter-examples, while the CNN story can be legitimately viewed as an anti-gun story. My opponent also claims that the media is not anti-gun just because it reports more gun crimes. This is true, but there are other methods that it shows its bias. Let us examine my opponent's analogy to foiled terrorist plots. This analogy does not fit the situation at hand with the media. Yes, a successful terrorist plot deservedly merits more coverage than a foiled one. But this is not the case with the media and gun stories. What makes the stories about average, every-day citizens discharging a gun, saving innocent lives in the process, less newsworthy than a child who gets a hold of his parents' irresponsibly placed gun and causes a tragedy?To address the point of contention about local news being more watched than national news, we must consider the more profound effect that hearing or reading something within the national news has upon a viewer. The importance of the story is magnified, and it reaches a wider audience. With national newspapers and television having their clear bias towards reporting gun crimes. And while there may not be 2.5 million newsworthy DGUs to report, there are certainly more than the combined total of around 5,000 words that the mainstream national news gave them. To answer the question over what Lott counted as a gun crime, it was strictly limited to objective accounts of domestic incidents of gun crime (a story about Afghanistan would not qualify). Lott also did count the WSJ in his study of newspapers; they reported zero DGUs in that year as well. Furthermore, if legitimate, newsworthy DGUs are as rare as my opponent claims, why don't they get more attention? Fox News also detracts nothing from the media bias, since by my opponent's own admission it is more far-right than CNN is far-left. Therefore, it is bound to attract an audience that already agrees that guns are beneficial, and airing more stories about DGUs won't affect them. By contrast, when left-leaning sources like CNN and the NY Times do not objectively report the issue, their audiences (composed of more moderate types along with liberals) will hear few stories about beneficial gun usage. To conclude, I will leave with a thought to consider. When the media, national or local, reports a story about an unfortunate gun tragedy or accident, it is almost always tailed by some kind of resulting campaign or push for more stringent gun control laws. However, it is unheard of for a report about a heroic DGU, if it manages to be shown, to be accompanied by a call for more access to guns by law-abiding citizens. The fact that so many people are skeptic of repeated studies showing high numbers of DGUs speaks to the manner in which the media has conveyed them to the general public. As a result of these factors, along with the presented evidence, I encourage a Pro vote.