No, I’m talking about stupidity for no good reason, or to be less charitable, in service of an agenda. One of the more recent brain farts was MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell saying that the difference of muzzle velocity between a handgun and a rifle projectile renders a teacher’s having a handgun useless. Huh? Hilarity ensued, of course, because the difference in speed would be measured in fractions of a millisecond. Maybe O’Donnell watched “The Matrix” a few too many times. (And for what it’s worth, there are plenty of reasons that President Donald Trump should reconsider arming teachers).
We’ve been down this road before. The emblematic episode of ignorance in gun reporting was when The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly, filing from Ferguson, Missouri thought that foam earplugs might be rubber bullets. (PRO-TIP: Asking stupid questions on Twitter is not fact-finding).
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Put more simply, the purpose of a free press is to scrutinize the government and provide people with information, so they can make informed decisions and hold their representatives responsible. The same crowd who calls the 2016 election “illegitimate” because of Russian disinformation attempts cannot now be heard to complain that information – especially incorrect information – doesn’t matter, because lobbyists, not public opinion, drives the political machine.
Democracy requires public trust in the press, which is the lifeblood of the public/media relationship. In its 2017 annual confidence poll, Gallup found that Americans’ trust in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” reached its lowest level in history, with only 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. A 2017 Knight Foundation poll echoed that sentiment, finding that more than eight in 10 U.S. adults believe that while the news media are critical to our democracy, 66% of Americans say most news media do not do a good job of separating fact from opinion. (In 1984, only 42% held this view).
Laughably Stupid Media Mistakes In Gun Reporting: How Much Do They Matter?
We’ve been down this road before. The emblematic episode of ignorance in gun reporting was when The Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly, filing from Ferguson, Missouri thought that foam earplugs might be rubber bullets. (PRO-TIP: Asking stupid questions on Twitter is not fact-finding).
[clip]
Put more simply, the purpose of a free press is to scrutinize the government and provide people with information, so they can make informed decisions and hold their representatives responsible. The same crowd who calls the 2016 election “illegitimate” because of Russian disinformation attempts cannot now be heard to complain that information – especially incorrect information – doesn’t matter, because lobbyists, not public opinion, drives the political machine.
Democracy requires public trust in the press, which is the lifeblood of the public/media relationship. In its 2017 annual confidence poll, Gallup found that Americans’ trust in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” reached its lowest level in history, with only 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media. A 2017 Knight Foundation poll echoed that sentiment, finding that more than eight in 10 U.S. adults believe that while the news media are critical to our democracy, 66% of Americans say most news media do not do a good job of separating fact from opinion. (In 1984, only 42% held this view).
Laughably Stupid Media Mistakes In Gun Reporting: How Much Do They Matter?
