Measuring The Media's Anti-Gun Bias

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One thing no one on this side of the gun debate expects is fair treatment from the media. They don’t reach out to the National Rifle Association for comment, or Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America, or Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation nearly as much as they reach out to Shannon Watts or Michael Bloomberg.

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I maintain it’s because they want to shape the narrative in a certain direction, and allowing the pro-gun side just as much time would work against that. Of course, it’s also possible that they’re just so innately biased that they don’t really know they’re being anti-gun.

Regardless, there’s bias against the Second Amendment in the media.

It seems the data supports that assertion.

The legacy media’s reaction to every tragic and horrific mass shooting often comes down to politics. If the shooter was white or male and the victims were female or minority — as were the six Asian American women gunned down in Atlanta — then the crime demonstrates “hate” or “white supremacy,” even if the shooter gives other motives and even if other victims (two of them, in this case) were not minority women. If the shooter was Islamic, however, the narrative quickly flips to gun control.

In the wake of the tragic grocery store shooting in Boulder, the big three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) trumpeted gun control on the evening and morning shows. A Newsbusters study showed just how egregious the bias truly was: for every one statement favoring gun rights, they aired fourteen statements supporting gun restrictions.

In four days (March 23 through March 26), the networks featured 36 minutes and 11 seconds of airtime for anti-gun-rights arguments and a paltry two minutes and 31 seconds for gun rights arguments. CBS devoted 24 minutes and 39 seconds to anti-gun arguments, while NBC spent seven minutes and 39 seconds calling for gun restrictions, and ABC spent three minutes and 53 seconds on this anti-gun activism.

Newsbusters noted that the networks have often seized on mass shootings to champion gun restrictions. After the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, Conn., the networks slanted their coverage 8-to-1 in favor of gun restrictions. After the 2016 Islamist mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, the networks also pushed gun restrictions by an 8-to-1 margin. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, that margin dipped to five-to-one against gun rights, but it bounded back up to 11-to-1 after the Parkland school shooting in 2018.

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In other words, it sure looks like they’re trying to shape the narrative.

When you only get a couple of minutes to discuss gun rights, it’s kind of impossible to rebut all the BS slung around. One of many internet laws is Brandolini’s law. It states,  “The amount of energy needed to refute [BS] is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”

And anti-gunners sling a whole lot of BS.

Pro-gun voices simply don’t have enough air time to debunk all the nonsense being spewed, which can lead many people to believe that the lack of debunking is because it can’t be debunked. In a way, they’re right. It can’t be…not in the ridiculously limited time provided.

Meanwhile, this same media pretends to be unbiased.

Well, we ain’t buying it.

 

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