Purplehood wrote:Are you saying that instead of simply stating the facts in a clear, concise and brief matter that one should simply wait until the story fleshes itself out before saying anything at all? Or is the implication that one should not say anything if it doesn't serve the purpose of the individual readers own biases and perceptions?
Journalism is supposed to be about impartial observations of what has happened.
I am all about 2A rights and CHL and all the neat things we like to talk about on this forum. But I cannot see why anyone thinks that this most innocuous of articles has ANY particular slant and is meant to annoy one side or the other.
This simply looks like what a HS Journalism teacher might use as an example of objective reporting.
Please don't take this as a personal attack. I am simply looking for clarification on why anyone finds this article offensive (or any other term they want to use).
Firstly, I don't consider your response to be a personal attack.
I concede that I start from several assumptions that may, or may not, be merited in this particular case, though I believe they are generally true. 1. The article is posted on a a Philly TV station site --the political environment in Philly is notably liberal and anti-gun, and if there is a local TV outlet that isn't anti-gun, especially in the northeast, I've never heard of it. But then I don't watch TV much anymore and my ignorance of it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. 2. The blurb is apparently either, in whole, or in part, from an AP wire story and in my experience AP stories generally carry an anti-gun slant. 3. The MSM is almost entirely anti-gun. I'd say entirely but there may be some exceptions I'm not aware of. I'm talking about the entire media environment too, not just the news. When I did watch TV I can't remember seeing a single TV show that portrayed gun owners and people using guns for self-defense in anything but an unflattering, condescending, or openly insulting manner. 4. The MSM lies about guns, gun ownership, and self-defense in all kinds of ways, though they are generally clever enough not to lie outright: for instance, they call someone legally defending themselves against thugs a "vigilante," they call semi-automatic weapons "machine guns," they say someone who owns more than two guns has an "arsenal" or a "cache of weapons," 1000 rounds of .22 rimfire is a "stockpile of ammunition," and they omit facts that are relevant to making objective judgments about what is being reported (which I believe is what the article cited here is doing).
The above is the general context in which I interpret articles about guns in the MSM. So, given this context, let me address your specific questions:
1. Selective reporting of the facts can be a lie. You can say a lot of things that are true while omitting other relevant information and imply a conclusion, based on the information provided, that is false. This is a standard media tactic. If I saw this happening over time with the results sometimes serving a pro-gun agenda and sometimes an anti-gun agenda I think we could probably ascribe it to stating the known facts before all the facts are in. It's anecdotal, I admit, but it just seems to be that when the additional facts come out they almost always undermine an initial anti-gun narrative, and it never happens the other way round.
2. Journalism is supposed to be impartial and objective, but we all know it is not. We also know that the media is pervasively anti-gun. If it wasn't we could expect to see about as many articles and stories favorable to gun ownership as against it. In reality it happens so rarely that we all appreciate it when we see something in the media that approaches some kind of neutral recitation of the facts.
3. It may be what a high school journalism teacher would consider to be "objective reporting," but I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of journalism teachers, at high school, or college, are liberal activists and predominately anti-gun and anti-self-defense.
Now, the article itself, if I haven't already exhausted your patience:
The title is "Police: Philly Murder Suspect Had Florida Permit." I think the title, which is all many people ever see, is intended to communicate the notion that a criminal in Philly can legally get a gun permit in Florida, playing on the prejudices people up north have about the south. Ever read comments following some of these articles when they veer off into how people in Texas are a bunch of nuts, just because they're from Texas?
Read past the words of the article and consider the tone, then consider the logic. I assert that this article is deliberately deceptive for the follow reasons.....the Philly authorities know why his license was revoked. They either said and it wasn't included in the article or they didn't say and the reporter didn't ask. Seems like a pretty basic question to ask if you're interested in relating the facts, and relevant to the story if you're going to say that Florida gave him a license anyway. So, the next logical question is how could he get a license in Florida if his license in Pennsylvania was revoked? These are not facts that were unavailable at the time of the story. I don't know how the authorities initially communicated events, but the reason for the revocation was either already in the public record, in the press release, available by asking a question at a press conference, or available from a phone call, and I don't think Florida is keeping their license requirements a secret from reporters.
In my opinion, when a story raises an obvious question it doesn't answer, and the answer is easily obtained, then the information is missing because it serves the purpose of the reporter and editor to leave it out. Given the context I don't think it's a big leap to guess the purpose.