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

Thanks for the response DocZhiva. R1) CNN example My opponent claims he can show systematic intentional and purposeful bias in the media and offers up one example, probably the only good example he has offered thus far, of CNN fabricating a story. This is obviously an example of bad, unfair, and biased journalism but it does not prove anything systematic and the journalists who fabricated the story were punished. This fabrication is counter-balanced by fabrications from pro-gun advocates that embellish DGU's (defense gun usages), for example the fabricated Tracy Bridges story that TWO pro-gun authors then published in their books as a "case study" on media bias against guns. The second fabrication comes from the study my opponent cites that there are "2.5 million DGU's per year." My opponent claims there are multiple studies proving this, but there is only one, the Gary Kleck study. If there are other studies, they reproduce the same flawed methodology. ===Refutation of the Gary Kleck Study=== This "study" is actually just a survey handed out by Gary Kleck, asking people to self-report how often they used their guns in self-defense. According to The Times Online (UK), "Of nearly 5,000 American adults polled, 1.326 percent -- or 66 -- were determined by Kleck to have relied on guns for personal protection against criminals in the previous year. The rest is basic math -- too basic, some statisticians argue. Take 1.326 percent of all U.S. adults not incarcerated, and you arrive at the conclusion that Americans use their guns 2.5 million times a year for defense." [1] However, a similar survey that actually asked respondents to describe their "self-defense" episodes found that most of the episodes were actually "hostile gun displays" such as a gang flashing their guns at another gang (supposedly to "deter a fight"). The Times Online continues: "‘Who knows what `self-defense' means?' asked David Hemenway of Harvard University's Injury Control Center. For instance, a thug who shoots in a gang clash might argue he was just defending himself, Hemenway said. So Hemenway crafted surveys of his own. From interviews conducted in 1996 and 1999 involving about 4,500 total respondents, Hemenway found that most acknowledged acts of self-defense were ‘hostile gun displays' rather than ‘socially desirable' moves to halt a crime. Hemenway recently flipped through stories told by respondents describing their acts of self-defense. Here's one: `The police called. The alarm in my building went off so I went there to shut it off. Two men were outside my building, so from my car I shot at the ground near them.' Hemenway paused. ‘That's self-defense?' he asked. ‘Here's another,' the researcher said. ‘A 58-year-old male is watching TV with a holster strapped on him. He tells us, `I was watching a movie, and he (an acquaintance) interrupted me. I yelled that I was going to shoot him, and he ran to his car.' ‘I'm thinking, are these the best stories they can tell?' Hemenway said." [1] So most DGU's are actually hostile gun displays (HGD's). This would explain why newspapers don't report them all the time – because LEGITIMATE DGU's are actually pretty uncommon. ====================== Lastly, my opponent must show systematic bias. The liberal bias towards guns on CNN or the NY Times is going to be counter-balanced by the conservative bias in the treatment of the issue on Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, both sources which my opponent never includes in his statistics or case studies. The very last thing to consider is that the CNN story technically didn't lie about the destructive potential of fully automatic assault rifles – they CAN punch through a cinderblock. They only lied about the destructive potential of semi-automatic assault rifles. If anything, this is a PRO-GUN story because the federal government was considering banning only fully automatic assault rifles; had a "real" test aired, it could have made the public demand that semi-automatic varieties be banned as well. R2) Major national newspapers don't cover DGU's in equal proportion to gun crimes Firstly, it's not bias to cover one thing rather than another, it's sensationalism. Death sells. My opponent NEVER ANSWERS the argument that the news covers terrorist acts in disproportion to foiled terrorist plots. That doesn't mean the media PREFERS successful terrorist plots to unsuccessful ones or is an advocate for successful terrorist plots. Second, as I've stated, a story about a gun crime is not inherently anti-gun, depending on the coverage. If all the story covers is the facts, what people take away from the story will depend on what they already believe. If a pro-gun person hears the story, he will shake his head and say "it's that horrible person's fault, I hate murderers." If an anti-gun person hears the story, they will think "wow, I wish guns were banned." So a murder with a gun is not inherently an "anti-gun story." Thirdly, this presumes that crimes and DGU's occur in equal proportion in real life. If DGU's are far more rare than crimes, newspapers are just reporting these stories as they come in. Since the Hemenway study finds that most DGU's are actually hostile gun displays, then major newspapers ARE reporting many of the DGU's that are captured by the Gary Kleck study since many of those DGU's are actually gun crimes (like gang "self-defense" shootings). But Kleck never asked people to describe their DGU. Apparently when a DGU is described in detail, John Lott suddenly realizes that these are crimes are not DGU's, like the person from the Hemenway study who said he threatened to shoot an acquaintance for disrupting his movie and that was self defense. This is an obvious problem with any studies that involve self-reporting. Fourthly, local news is watched much more commonly than national news, so it shouldn't be a problem since my opponent agrees that all these stories ARE covered by local news. According to Pew Research, 54% of Americans watch LOCAL news. [2] 31% consume online news, the majority of which visit aggregator sites, like Google or Yahoo, which include local news stories (Google has an entire SECTION for local news). [2] So when my opponent says that 40% of the articles on pro-NRA sites were not published by top newspapers, ALL of those articles were still published. The NRA is just linking to local newspapers. 60% being published by top national newspapers is also A LOT. ALSO, some of these aren't really DGU's. For example, the Armed Citizen, under their DGU section, links to an article which found that an ex-Temple law student was found "not guilty" in court of attempted murder for shooting a classmate during an argument. [3] That's a DGU??? That's a DGU that John Lott believes the national news is REMISS in not reporting??? Now my opponent looks at the top 3 national newspapers and then the top 10 and says reporting on gun crimes is more common than reporting on DGU's. This would not show bias if gun crimes are far more common than DGU's. There are approximately 1 million crimes in the US each year, many of which are performed with guns. [4] We don't know the number of LEGITIMATE DGU's, but it's likely much lower than 1 million. In addition, my opponent himself admits that 60% of DGU's ARE covered by a top 100 newspaper. The same can't be said for gun crimes, as a percentage. Clearly far fewer than 60% of crimes committed with a gun are reported by a top 100 newspaper, considering how many there are. So DGU's actually receive coverage in disproportion to their occurrence. Lastly, this study was done in 2001. I question how many of the "gun crime" stories in the NY Times were about gun crimes in Afghanistan, considering our troops had just entered the country. For example, would this NY Times story about a gun crime in Pakistan be included in the study: http://www.nytimes.com... My opponent next claims that the NY Times NEVER cites pro-gun authors. This is just patently false. The NY Times decided to run an op-ed by John Lott in 2006, in spite of accusations that the data set he was referring to contained fraudulent data. [5] One final note: Frank Zimring, a criminologist from UC Berkeley, once noted how ridiculous it is that anyone who suggests reasonable laws to prevent crime is considered "anti-gun." Someone who advocates that we strengthen laws to prevent the mentally deranged from acquiring guns is an "anti-gun advocate." Zimring points out that the NRA has essentially framed the issue so there is no middle ground and no such thing as a "moderate" viewpoint in this debate. So if John Lott classifies an author or article as anti-gun merely for suggesting sane laws to prevent crime, that is not truly an "anti-gun" piece. R3) The 3 major news networks John Lott studied the "3 major news networks" for media bias towards guns. By the 3 major news networks, he means "ABC, CBS and NBC." He of course excludes Fox News from his study, which completely invalidates the results. I bet Lott excluded the Wall Street Journal and the National Review from his newspaper study as well. It's easy to show that the media is biased when you only study left-leaning news and EXCLUDE right-leaning news from your study. In fact, according to Pew, Fox News is viewed as far more conservatively biased than any other network is liberally biased. [6] This also shows how outdated the Lott study is, given that the top 3 major news networks today are Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. The topic is present tense - "is biased" - so outdated studies shouldn't apply. Also, the majority of Americans watch local news, not national news, so this doesn't even matter. I don't even know how studying Morning News is legitimate, since their coverage is so different from nightly news. So ultimately, my opponent's only real example is one CNN story, which is counter-balanced by the fabricated Tracy Bridges DGU at Appalachian Law School - sown far and wide by John Lott as a famous DGU, the NRA-backed websites that consider "being declared not guilty of murder" as a DGU, and all the DGU's from the Kleck study that were actually hostile gun displays. [1] http://www.thehighroad.org... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://thearmedcitizen.com... [4] http://www.disastercenter.com... [5] http://mediamatters.org... [6] http://people-press.org...