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Sensationalist headline. Heavy on insinuation. Missing important details.

I've seen better journalism in the National Enquirer.

jester wrote:Sensationalist headline. Heavy on insinuation. Missing important details.

It just has to sell advertising/subscribers.

Why do people keep thinking "news" has anything to do with "reporting facts"?

I just read that article twice. What was wrong with it?

Authorities say Hill's Philadelphia license to carry a concealed weapon was revoked in 2008. But they say that although he had no connection to Florida, that state granted him a license to carry a concealed weapon that must be honored in Pennsylvania despite the Philadelphia revocation.

Interestingly, DPS says just the opposite regarding carrying on a Utah license if your TX license is revoked.

Adult male was breaking into cars.
Police did nothing.

Local resident stopped the criminal permanently.
Police arrest local resident.

I'd like to know what his Philly license was revoked for... And I feel for him when he goes in front of a jury for this. While I support his right to protect his property, in the eyes of a jury shooting someone 13 times might be seen as a bit excessive. It would be easy to reach a conclusion for me that he did not just want to stop the theft of his car, or personal items from said car, but that he intended to kill the thief/vandal. Of course we don't know all the facts-did the thief/vandal have a gun and brandish it? Is that why 13 shots were needed. That "piece" of journalism leaves me asking more questions than it answered.

I thought it was a completely refreshing change of pace for contemporary journalism.

It stuck to the few "facts" as they were currently known, offered no opinions and was short and to the point.

Wow.13 rounds. I hope he wasn't using a revolver.

Purplehood wrote:I thought it was a completely refreshing change of pace for contemporary journalism.

It stuck to the few "facts" as they were currently known, offered no opinions and was short and to the point.

If one of the comments following the article is correct it's another slanted hit-piece. The article implies he legally obtained a Florida license --as if there is a loophole in the law. I don't know what the requirements are for a Florida CHL, but the commenter claims this guy could only have obtained the license by lying --an illegal act. So, while the article may not technically be a lie, if this commenter is correct, it is effectively a lie.

Then there is the issue of "facts as they were currently known." Sometimes enough of the facts aren't known to make a credible report, and the honest thing to do is wait until more is known. It's disingenuous for the media to claim ignorance of the facts or of the law when that ignorance serves their agenda, and the agenda of the MSM is clearly anti-gun and anti-self-defense. Based on about 30 years of observing media lies and distortions about guns and self-defense I'm inclined to believe they used a set of facts that served an agenda.

VMI77 wrote:

Purplehood wrote:I thought it was a completely refreshing change of pace for contemporary journalism.

It stuck to the few "facts" as they were currently known, offered no opinions and was short and to the point.

If one of the comments following the article is correct it's another slanted hit-piece. The article implies he legally obtained a Florida license --as if there is a loophole in the law. I don't know what the requirements are for a Florida CHL, but the commenter claims this guy could only have obtained the license by lying --an illegal act. So, while the article may not technically be a lie, if this commenter is correct, it is effectively a lie.

Then there is the issue of "facts as they were currently known." Sometimes enough of the facts aren't known to make a credible report, and the honest thing to do is wait until more is known. It's disingenuous for the media to claim ignorance of the facts or of the law when that ignorance serves their agenda, and the agenda of the MSM is clearly anti-gun and anti-self-defense. Based on about 30 years of observing media lies and distortions about guns and self-defense I'm inclined to believe they used a set of facts that served an agenda.

Police say a man accused of killing a teenager after his car was broken into had a Florida license to carry a concealed weapon even though his Philadelphia license to carry had been revoked.
Police say 28-year-old Marqus Hill was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder and related offenses in the death of 18-year-old Irving Santana over the weekend. Investigators say Santana was shot 13 times Sunday after Hill saw his car being broken into in the Olney section of North Philadelphia.
Authorities say Hill's Philadelphia license to carry a concealed weapon was revoked in 2008. But they say that although he had no connection to Florida, that state granted him a license to carry a concealed weapon that must be honored in Pennsylvania despite the Philadelphia revocation

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).

Purplehood wrote:Police say 28-year-old Marqus Hill was arrested Wednesday and charged with murder and related offenses in the death of 18-year-old Irving Santana over the weekend. Investigators say Santana was shot 13 times Sunday after Hill saw his car being broken into in the Olney section of North Philadelphia.

That part is objective journalism.

His Florida license is irrelevant. The only reason to mention it is if they're writing a hit piece.

Reporting on his revoked PA license is suspicious. If it was revoked because he was convicted of a felony, they would have mentioned that, so I wonder why they're withholding the reason it was revoked. I bet it was revoked because he didn't kowtow to the right people or another bogus reason.

Calling the adult criminal a teenager when he's old enough to vote (if he's a legal citizen) is technically correct but most people don't think legal adult when they see the word teen, so good journalism would avoid the ambiguity.

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.

Quality Journalism

There are several things wrong with the story. First of all, there is no Philadelphia license to carry. It's a Pennsylvania license to carry issued by the county of your residence, in this case Philadelphia county. Second, a carry license is not even required in Pennsylvania to shoot someone who is stealing your property. PA licenses to carry are issued to carry concealed on your person or in your vehicle.

The reasons for revocation of a license are the same as those for refusal to grant one. So the fact that he had a license at one time and had it revoked would mean that something changed from the initial conditions. According to this story, his license was revoked in 2005 after a "confrontation with officers", and he assaulted an officer in 2008 when he lost his appeal to restore his carry rights. Reading further in the story, however, in 2005 he was charged with "charged with attempted murder, assault, and carrying a weapon without a license" but was not convicted of any offense. (Interesting that he was charged with carrying without a license when he was licensed at the time.) During his 2008 appeal, he became irate and supposedly assaulted a police officer outside the court room. He was only charged with disorderly conduct, however, and there's no information stating that he was convicted of that charge. So it sounds like Philadelphia police simply decided that he shouldn't be carrying and revoked his license, and it made him very angry.

The entire discussion of carry licenses is irrelevant to the case at hand. Yet the entire focus of the article is carry licenses, both revoked and issued by another state.

I'm not trying to justify what the man did. Without knowing any more facts than the few from this story, shooting a man 13 times seems excessive, but we don't know enough facts to make that determination. What we do know is that the story isn't about the theft of his property or the man he shot. It's about his right to carry and about a supposed loophole in the law. It's quite convenient too, considering PA is presently considering a law to close that "loophole".