bad journalism

Uncategorized

Oh, Noes!

December 8, 2012 by 2 Comments

In an anti-gun editorial today in the Herald News of Woodland Park, New Jersey, the editors urge Gov. Chris Christie to unite with governors of other states to make it tougher to purchase firearms. They say it won’t be an easy task as they express their dismay about pro-rights moves by other states.

We realize it’s no easy task. Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a law last
year to allow people to carry concealed weapons into bars and other
places that serve alcohol, joining Arizona and Tennessee. Gov. Bobby
Jindal of Louisiana signed a law in 2010 allowing guns into houses of
worship. North Dakota, Texas, Maine and a raft of other states allow
employees to bring a gun to work as long as it stays locked in the car.
The Wisconsin Senate now allows members to carry guns on the floor,
while the state Assembly allows guns in the public viewing galleries.

The thought that some states actually recognize that law enforcement can’t be everywhere and realize that responsible citizens should be allowed to provide for their own self-protection is beyond comprehension to them. It shouldn’t be given that they just had a cop in that town indicted yesterday on attempted sexual assault on underage girls but it is.

Uncategorized

Just Rubs Me The Wrong Way

September 11, 2011 by 4 Comments

I’m not ethnocentric nor do I believe the United States has always been right in everything it has done pre and post-9/11. I think the Patriot Act has become an assault on civil liberties under color of law and I think the TSA is an abomination.

Still this tripe by a Canadian business and current affairs columnist just rubs me the wrong way. David Olive of the Toronto Star wrote a column entitled “I’m already nauseated by the 9/11 memorializing” a few days ago which included this.

After all, it was a panicked response to 9/11 that conflated that terrorist attack into the nation-defining episode Osama bin Laden intended, unleashing the dogs of war on innocent people, stripping Americans of basic civil rights, degrading America’s military prowess and its public finances, and exposing the U.S. to the world as maladroit, mendacious and belligerent in diplomacy; incompetent at military occupation; inept in the gathering and interpretation of intelligence; and having only a lip-service commitment to the eradication of torture from the world. (I assumed, cynically, that the U.S. would at least bring its own WMDs to plant if it couldn’t find any of Saddam’s, in the manner of a trigger-happy LAPD equpped with “drop guns” for use when accidentally making widows in South Central LA.)

Uncategorized

Buying Journalists

March 28, 2011 by

Bitter and Sebastian at Snow Flakes in Hell have been following Minnesota Public Radio reporter Brandt Williams and his “work” on gun violence. Williams is a Joyce Foundation Fellow and his pro-gun control reporting is based upon a grant from the Joyce Foundation.

Bitter nails it when she writes:

There’s no way that Williams and any other reporters involved can claim that their work is free of bias since a stipulation of taking the $5,000 was that their work be written in order to “have a major public policy impact.” In addition to Williams, Joyce was willing to fund up to six other writers or broadcasters who were based “in midwest and northeast region with priority given to journalists in Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” Since Joyce doesn’t appear to list them, the coordinating organization doesn’t list them, and no results turn up on media sites for titles and terms such as “Joyce Journalism Fellow,” it could be hard to figure out exactly who was paid for these planted stories.

The Joyce Foundation has tried to influence courts on Second Amendment issues by paying for law review articles that pushed the collective right theory. Now it appears that they think they can “buy” stories in the media in the Upper Midwest through $5,000 fellowships to compliant anti-gun journalists.

Read both the postings from Bitter and Sebastian to get a better feel for how the Joyce Foundation is working to plant stories on “gun violence.”