TexasCHLforum.com

This little two-paragraph brief in the Austin paper this morning just really got my goat. So much so that I wrote the following diatribe and just sent it to the letters to the editor section, knowing full well it's way too long and they'll never print it.

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/cen ... _frontpage" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Robber had submachine gun

A man robbed a Southeast Austin gas station of an unspecified amount of cash Thursday using a submachine gun, police said. No arrest was made Thursday.

The robbery took place about 6:20 a.m. at the Chevron station at 2317 S. Pleasant Valley Road.

My letter to the editor:

Please note: I realize this letter is way too long to meet your 150-word limit for publication. But perhaps the editors of your paper will read this and take it to heart and stop perpetuating the same lies in print. If you’d like me to re-write this information into an extended letter or “column”or whatever for purposes of printing in your paper, I’d be happy to do so. Or better yet, perhaps one of your reporters could spend the five minutes it just took me to dig up the below information from a few quick Google searches, and add a few more minutes interviewing some “experts” and write an article explaining to your readers the difference between what your paper (and most other media outlets) reports and reality in reference to firearms in this country.

The lead brief in your “Central Texas Digest” crime blotter on page 2 of the Metro section November 19, 2010, is stunning example of laziness, ineptitude, parroting of authority, and likely an example of outright bias by your newspaper toward gun control.

It’s amazing that you managed all of that in a two-paragraph brief. Realizing that you likely cannot see your errors for yourself let me explain. It all boils down to the terms “submachine gun.”

Do any of you even know what a submachine gun is? Do you actually think someone who would stick up a convenience store would have the means to possess such a weapon? Does such critical thinking even cross your minds when you see these terms, or do you just repeat what the Austin Police Department tells you?

Below is an outline of questions that your reporters and editors should be asking any time they see inflammatory terms such as “submachine gun”, “machine gun”, “assault rifle”, “assault weapon”, “AK-47”, “machine gun”, “automatic weapon”, etc. proposed for printing in your newspaper:

- How do the witnesses and/or police know what kind of weapon was used? Was the weapon fired? Or is the description based solely on appearance. The only way for the average person (even many police officers) to differentiate a “machine gun” of any kind from a look-a-like semi-automatic weapon (or even a toy) is if the weapon fires multiple rounds from a single squeeze of the trigger. If more than one bullet does not leave the barrel with one squeeze of the trigger, then by definition the weapon is NOT a “machine gun”, “submachine gun”, “assault rifle” etc.
This information is not difficult to find – simply go to the reporter’s best friend, wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submachine_gun" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

- If you still believe the suspect had a true “machine gun” of some kind, how did the suspect acquire such a weapon in the first place? The current laws on civilian ownership of such weapons – stemming from the Federal gun control acts of 1934, 1968, and 1986 – make ownership by average Americans extremely difficult and expensive. The average cost for a civilian to own a single legally transferable machine gun is more than $15,000. Do you really think a convenience store robber has one of these tightly controlled, limited-supply weapons? And if he has it, would he use it to stick up a quickie mart when a $100 Saturday Night Special would complete the same task just as easily?
For more information about how to obtain such a gun, read the first link that pops up in Google for “buy a machine gun” - http://www.impactguns.com/store/machine ... ities.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is it not a more distinct possibility that the suspect DID NOT in fact have a “submachine gun”, such as the H&K MP5 shown in the photograph on the above-referenced wikipedia page, but instead had a semi-automatic copy of that gun, perhaps one that only fires the lowly .22LR bullet that most of us fired at YMCA summer camp years ago? Like this GSG-5 rifle for instance http://www.impactguns.com/store/GSG5.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ? Or perhaps the “weapon” used was not even a firearm at all, but instead a very realistic “airsoft” replica toy like this one http://www.airsoftextreme.com/store/ind ... ts_id=3887" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Can you tell the difference between a real “submachine gun” and one of the many other possibilities just from looking at the gun? Me neither.

But to be able to put the terms “submachine gun” in a headline, even on a minor crime brief, draws attention (it certainly drew my attention). And that’s all your newspaper is really trying to do, right? Draw attention? Sell papers? And perhaps while you’re at it, contribute just one more little nugget of misinformation toward the irrational fear that any criminal in this country can get his hands on a machine gun and wreak havoc.
It just isn’t so. And your brief is a bold-faced lie.

You owe your readers a retraction and explanation of why you reported something as fact that you could not have possible known to be true.

Very well said, Sir.

Good job!

-Cain

The only thing I would suggest doing different is to send them a link to http://gunfacts.info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; as well.

Great letter.

Let's see if they have the grace to reply.

Bravo. Unfortuneately it will go into the nearest waste bin. They are not in the business of being right.

SlickTX wrote:...They are not in the business of being right.

Nope, they're in the business of making money, and scaring people makes money.

We can grouse all we want, but this kind of "journalism" has been in existence for over a hundred years.

One major assumption was that the already proven criminal went thru the legal process to own a SMG. While I agree with your remarks, just seems funny to explain the process of the LEGAL possession of a SMG truly matters to a person willing to rob a store. I'm sure no criminal out there owns an automatic weapon.

</devil's advocate>

That is an important message but one, I'm afraid will fall on deaf ears.

An automatic weapon is a weapon that fires more than one round with a single pull of the trigger.
A sub-machine gun is an automatic weapon that fires a pistol round, hence the "sub-" part of it.
A machine gun is an automatic weapon that fires a rifle round or larger round (like the Ma-Deuce).
(IANAGA).

I know that such distinctions would also be useless to a reporter trying to get the story in print before anyone else.

LAYGO wrote:One major assumption was that the already proven criminal went thru the legal process to own a SMG. While I agree with your remarks, just seems funny to explain the process of the LEGAL possession of a SMG truly matters to a person willing to rob a store. I'm sure no criminal out there owns an automatic weapon.

</devil's advocate>

Good point, and I probably should've more overtly pointed out that the relative lack of full-auto guns in circulation at all - because of expense/hassle of obtaining one legally - means they are even less likely to show up stolen than the countless shotguns and junk revolvers that end up stolen and in hands of crooks in poor parts of towns all over the country. The subtle point I was trying to make is that if someone is going to go through the time and expense of obtaining a $15,000 transferable full-auto weapon, they're probably going to keep it very well protected in a gun safe or whatnot.

How do you know it wasn't a subgun? Did you inspect the weapon? Did you even see a picture?

Also, if the police said it was a subgun and it wasn't, your complaints should be to the police department for making a false statement, not to the newspaper for reporting what the police said.

Bart wrote:How do you know it wasn't a subgun?

Educated guess. Which is far and above better than what the newspaper did, which was uneducated parroting of the police.

Bart wrote: Did you inspect the weapon? Did you even see a picture?

No, and neither did the police or the newspaper. Yet they assert as fact in the article that it was a submachine gun. My letter openly questions the basis of this "fact" and calls them lazy liers until they can prove the facts they report. They don't have the basis to report this as fact.

Bart wrote: Also, if the police said it was a subgun and it wasn't, your complaints should be to the police department for making a false statement, not to the newspaper for reporting what the police said.

I complain to the newspaper because the newspaper printed the false information without doing their JOB and fact-checking the information. Just because police say something doesn't mean its worthy of printing in a newspaper (though it does help the newspaper avoid libel charges, which is why lazy reporters and editors don't lose their jobs for printing inaccurate information as long as those lies came from the police ... btw, not saying there is actual libel here, unless the suspect is caught and wrongly charged with possessing an unlawful weapon in addition to the armed robbery). Police purposely lie to suspects, the media, etc. all the time. It is the job of a journalist to decipher the facts from the spin, regardless of the source or subject of a story.

I worked in the newspaper business as a writer, editor, designer for more than 10 years. I know exactly how this garbage gets inserted into the paper and it's pure laziness and lack of regard for the basic duty of a journalist to check the facts before printing something. This was a two-paragraph brief likely written verbatim from an APD press release with ZERO fact checking, much less the critical thinking required to question the accuracy of a report given by "authorities".

Reporters and editors MUST as a responsibility of their jobs have the general knowledge to question the veracity of a statement like "convenience store robbed by man with submachine gun" ... it's a reporters' and editor's job to know that such a thing is exceedingly rare and unlikely and to at the very least couch the statement with a phrase like "according to witness" or "purportedly" or something. A better and more time-consuming task would be to question the reporting officers and the witnesses and victims and see what exactly they saw that led them to believe the gun was a submachine gun and then decide from that point how to proceed with the story based on those reports and the basic knowledge of firearms available with the click of a mouse onto a wikipedia page.

austinrealtor wrote:

Bart wrote:How do you know it wasn't a subgun?

Educated guess. Which is far and above better than what the newspaper did, which was uneducated parroting of the police.

Bart wrote: Did you inspect the weapon? Did you even see a picture?

No, and neither did the police or the newspaper. Yet they assert as fact in the article that it was a submachine gun. My letter openly questions the basis of this "fact" and calls them lazy liers until they can prove the facts they report. They don't have the basis to report this as fact.

Bart wrote: Also, if the police said it was a subgun and it wasn't, your complaints should be to the police department for making a false statement, not to the newspaper for reporting what the police said.

I complain to the newspaper because the newspaper printed the false information without doing their JOB and fact-checking the information. Just because police say something doesn't mean its worthy of printing in a newspaper (though it does help the newspaper avoid libel charges, which is why lazy reporters and editors don't lose their jobs for printing inaccurate information as long as those lies came from the police ... btw, not saying there is actual libel here, unless the suspect is caught and wrongly charged with possessing an unlawful weapon in addition to the armed robbery). Police purposely lie to suspects, the media, etc. all the time. It is the job of a journalist to decipher the facts from the spin, regardless of the source or subject of a story.

I worked in the newspaper business as a writer, editor, designer for more than 10 years. I know exactly how this garbage gets inserted into the paper and it's pure laziness and lack of regard for the basic duty of a journalist to check the facts before printing something. This was a two-paragraph brief likely written verbatim from an APD press release with ZERO fact checking, much less the critical thinking required to question the accuracy of a report given by "authorities".

Reporters and editors MUST as a responsibility of their jobs have the general knowledge to question the veracity of a statement like "convenience store robbed by man with submachine gun" ... it's a reporters' and editor's job to know that such a thing is exceedingly rare and unlikely and to at the very least couch the statement with a phrase like "according to witness" or "purportedly" or something. A better and more time-consuming task would be to question the reporting officers and the witnesses and victims and see what exactly they saw that led them to believe the gun was a submachine gun and then decide from that point how to proceed with the story based on those reports and the basic knowledge of firearms available with the click of a mouse onto a wikipedia page.

Even if your letter to the editor does not get published it still may have a positive influence on what they publish in future stories.

99.99% of the time the paper will be wrong about these things. However, there are no facts to be checked until the weapon is retrieved and verified to be the one used in the robbery. They could be just parroting what the police told them like Bart said. Or the clerk who was robbed knows his weapons and positively identified an SMG. If not, it would have been more responsible to have just said "gun."

austinrealtor wrote:Reporters and editors MUST as a responsibility of their jobs have the general knowledge to question the veracity of a statement like "convenience store robbed by man with submachine gun"

It's not likely a submachine gun would be used in a robbery. It's also not likely a criminal would use a Jaguar as a getaway car. However, if the police say the suspect fled in a silver Jaguar, do reporters and editors have a responsibility to verify the make and color of the vehicle? Are the reporters also supposed to verify that it was a man (not a legal "child") who robbed the store? When can they, in your opinion, report what someone else says? It seems to me that unless they witnessed the crime, they have to report the event according to someone else, whether that's the police, the victim, or other witnesses.