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Townhall...
News
Versus
Propaganda
by Thomas
Sowell
Jul 24,
2012
Since so
many in the media cannot resist turning every tragedy into a political
talking
point, it was perhaps inevitable that (1) someone would try to link the
shooting
rampage at the Batman movie in Colorado to the Tea Party, and that (2)
some
would try to make it a reason to impose more gun control laws.
Too many
people in the media cannot seem to tell the difference between
reporting the
news and creating propaganda.
NBC News
apparently could not resist doctoring the transcript of the
conversation
between George Zimmerman and the police after the Trayvon Martin
shooting. Now
ABC News took the fact that the man arrested for the shooting in
Colorado was
named James Holmes to broadcast to the world the fact that there is a
James
Holmes who is a member of the Tea Party in Colorado
The fact
has since come out that these are two different men, one in his 20s and
the
other in his 50s. But corrections never catch up with irresponsible
news
broadcasts. The James Holmes who belongs to the Tea Party has been
deluged with
phone calls. I hope he sues ABC News for every dime they have.
This is not
the first time that the mainstream media have tried to create a link
between
conservatives and violence. Years ago, the Oklahoma City bombing was
blamed on
Rush Limbaugh, despite the absence of any evidence that the bomber was
inspired
by Rush Limbaugh.
Similar
things have happened repeatedly, going all the way back to the
assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, which was blamed on a hostile right-wing
atmosphere
in Dallas, even though the assassin had a long history of being on the
far left
fringe.
But, where
the shoe is on the other foot -- as when the Unabomber had a much
marked-up
copy of an environmentalist book by Al Gore -- the media heard no evil,
saw no
evil and spoke no evil. If people in the media cannot decide whether
they are
in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is
all the
more important that the public understand that difference, and choose
their
news sources accordingly.
As for gun
control advocates, I have no hope whatever that any facts whatever will
make
the slightest dent in their thinking -- or lack of thinking. New York’s
Mayor
Bloomberg and CNN’s Piers Morgan were on the air within hours of the
shooting,
pushing the case for gun control laws.
You might
never know, from what they and other gun control advocates have said,
that
there is a mountain of evidence that gun control laws not only fail to
control
guns but are often counterproductive. However, for those other people
who still
think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.
Do
countries with strong gun control laws have lower murder rates? Only if
you
cherry-pick the data...
Read the
rest of this article at Townhall
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