Impartial" Journalist Turns Activist

[Tim Nunan]

http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Read.aspx?ID=6954

"Impartial" Journalist Turns Activist: A recent article by Chad D. Baus featured on the Buckeye Firearms Association website examined the biased, unethical, and unprofessional practice of "advocacy journalism" as it relates to the gun debate. Bias in the media -- especially when it concerns the Second Amendment and "gun control" -- is certainly not a new concept, but the article describes one of the most blatant cases we've seen to date.

In this particular instance, Baus describes a series of articles written by journalist Theodore Decker and recently published in The Columbus Dispatch, which decry what the articles portray as rampant gun violence in Ohio. The three-part series, entitled "Overrun by Guns," includes all of the typical one-sided arguments (with no mention at all of defensive uses of firearms) and anti-gun talking points.

But the articles, it turns out, are not just anti-gun pontifications of a journalist who is bold enough not to care about his biased portrayal. Instead, Baus reveals that the anti-gun series was funded by a grant from the vehemently anti-gun Joyce Foundation and that the intent of the series was to "have a major public policy impact" on gun violence in Ohio.

And it gets worse. According to Baus, grant recipients attended a "skills workshop" where they were "indoctrinated with speeches by spokespersons from Joyce Foundation-funded anti-gun rights organizations including Legal Community Against Gun Violence and the Violence Policy Center." Later, Baus notes, the journalists attended yet another seminar that included as panelists "the Chief of Staff to the Office of Justice Programs at the Obama administration's Department of Justice, and the President of the anti-gun rights ACLU."

What we have, then is an "activist" journalist, who is commissioned by an anti-gun organization to write a series of "advocacy" articles intended to affect public policy, under the guise of respectable, unbiased newspaper reporting. That is outrageous.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7827

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