Police investigating the shootings at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut, released a stack of documents today that reveal many previously undisclosed details about the crime and the perpetrator, Adam Lanza. Among the items made available to the press were inventories of a well-stocked cache of weapons and ammunition, a variety of notebooks and journals, and various computers, books, and gaming devices.
Also disclosed in the warrants were materials from the National Rifle Association including an NRA booklet on the “Basics of Pistol Shooting” and a certificate from the NRA in Lanza’s name.
Curiously, when Fox News broadcast a story on these documents they omitted any reference to the NRA items listed therein. Reporter Rick Leventhal had sufficient time to note that Lanza was an avid gamer, but he said nothing about the NRA. The report even included prepared graphics with three screen-fulls of bullet-pointed lists of the contents of the documents, but no mention of those related to the NRA.
Either Fox News doesn’t think that the presence of NRA training books and certificates are relevant to the story (although samurai swords and books on autism are), or they are deliberately protecting the NRA from the bad publicity that could result from disclosing all the facts.
This casts a whole new light on Fox’s slogan, “We report. You decide.” Perhaps it should read “We report some things but withhold those that reflect poorly on our ideological allies. You decide based on the censored set of ‘facts’ we choose to reveal.”
The result of this sort of journalistic chicanery is that viewers will always make decisions based on the prejudices imposed by Fox’s editors and reporters. Ironically, their overtly biased story construction only makes matters worse. Were they to have included the information about the NRA, they could have also pointed out that the NRA cannot be held responsible for crimes committed by anyone who purchases their books or takes their training courses. However, by omitting the facts completely, Fox makes it appear that the NRA has something to be embarrassed by and that they benefit from Fox’s malfeasance. Perhaps they are even complicit in influencing Fox to alter their reporting.
In the end, it is just another reason that Fox viewers are so grossly ill-informed and hold views that widely diverge from the majority of Americans who have a more common sense perspective on gun safety issues and many other political and social matters. It explains the existence of the Fox Bubble World and the pathetic drones who reside therein.
Mark, exactly what does NRA shooting materials and a large cache of weapons and ammo have to do with anything. Yeah, yeah, I know – the article is about fox news not reporting those items and maybe they should have noted those items too. But, given your desire to mislead people with respect to opposition to your beliefs, I’m sure it wasn’t just about omitted information. You just can’t accept that neither the NRA nor any weapon is responsible for what happened – ONLY ADAM LANZA (and maybe his mother for not securing her weapons with a mentally ill person in the house). Does this information mean that now, any number of law abiding citizens who has a large cache of weapons and ammo, is an imminent threat to school children and needs to be disarmed? More distortion to achieve your goal of reducing our 2nd ammendment rights? You reek of desperation and you’re pathetic, do you also want to convince us that 2+2=5. Maybe FOX news is right this time – that information is totally irrelevant except to 2nd ammendment haters like you. The only danger to society is you and your ideology.
From a journalistic point of view, FOX’s reporting was deceptive. Unless they didn’t receive the entire report, this omission would be a firing offense if I were the guy in charge.
In this case, the messenger messed up, probably on purpose. This is not exclusive to FOX, by the way.
Beyond that, “so f***ing what?” as Mark often extols.
I appreciate your open-mindedness on this. Especially after reading Scott’s incoherent rant above.
I also agree that this sort of thing is not exclusive to Fox. But then, almost nothing I write about is exclusive to Fox. My writing about it should not imply that.
As for “So F**king What,” I think the actual discovery of the NRA documents is not a big deal and in no way indicts the NRA. What makes this otherwise trivial matter important is the fact that Fox omitted it. It is their omission that I find troublesome, not the underlying issue. In effect, they are unnecessarily elevating the matter by their malfeasance.
Agreed.
Just asking here….but why censor fucking? I mean, we all know what the word is regardless of taking out a few letters, and we read it to ourselves as if it were uncensored anyway……partially censoring words is so fu&@ing pointless. Just sayin.
“In the end, it is just another reason that Fox viewers are so grossly ill-informed and hold views that widely diverge from the majority of Americans who have a more common sense perspective on gun safety issues and many other political and social matters. It explains the existence of the Fox Bubble World and the pathetic drones who reside therein.”
And in the proceeding paragraph you rightly point out that by omitting information makes it look as if they are hiding something. Or maybe they are afraid something might get through some of the fog. But for fox, this is their M.O. If you don’t have a winning argument they will just lie, deceive, misinform, deflect, omit… regardless of any issue they promote or oppose.
Seems the perfect recipe for creating the aforementioned drones. Oh look…
FOX viewers are not the only ones who are misinformed. If you believe that, you are probably way too deep in the fog created by MSNBC and others. Even Mark admits this is not exclusive to FOX.
So, where do you go for your truth? Without the fog?
There is always some fog. It’s important to understand that it’s there. I get some sense of clarity by reviewing what various sources have to say on a given subject and then make up my own mind.
Among those sources are: NYT, WSJ, Time, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the broadcast networks, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN. I also read a large number of blogs and other online news and opinion.
Good answer. I visit several sources as well, including fox but the networks seem to cover what they think is relevant to you. There are exceptions at times. NPR is fairly straight forward.
Let me be clear; there is a big difference between the fog and the left/right bias. My ideology is left so I choose to visit those places more often but they haven’t dictated my ideology. And they’re accurate for the most part which is a big selling point for me. When I visit fox, one thing I can be assured of is deception. They never disappoint.
If one does the one-stop shopping, then the fog creeps in and that makes it hard to find your way out.
Hey Mark, perhaps there was some evidence found that Lanza was a regular viewer of FOX news!?
You may not like my doing this mark, and if you choose to delete this comment I totally understand. I just thought this was an excellent, lucid, and properly focused article on the issue. I just wonder why it took a comedy website to write it. Oh, and it’s funny too. Read it, it’s very well done. If you’re a rightist, it’ll seem too lefty for you, if you’re a leftist, it’ll seem too righty to you. I find it just right because it’s based on reasonable critical thought. They have some pretty good shit from time to time.
http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html
Brain, “Now we can do what all news agencies do, bend the truth, distort facts, withhold vital information.”
The media just made me sick with this one. All they talked about, whether it was CNN, MSNBC, or Fox, was about the guns and autism. None of them seem to want to report the news. Instead, they force feed their pre-masticated version of events down our throats like a mother bird feeding its chicks. People with autism are not the mentally ill in the sense a sociopath is.
You know what is pertinent information? Adam Lanza was a young male. Most mass shooters are young men going all the way back to Colombine. They were jaded young lanky men who felt brutalized and emasculated by the system. They had neither status, physical prowess, nor the respect of their community. In the end, it led to a psychotic break resulting in tragic deaths. It was not a coincidence they all shared this in common.
Most of the time, it results in just suicide. When there is a strong desire to reclaim dignity and masculinity, it can result in a shooting spree. These event are exceedingly rare and does not broach such urgency. Approximately 26 people died from the Sandy Hook shooting. 33 people died from flu related illnesses this year. Where was the national outcry? Not to belittle the recent tragedy, it just seemed one needed to die in a mass shooting in order to have received a nation-wide vigil.
We should count all lives the same and all deaths tragic, but the media does not hold everyone’s death with the same importance. Only the truly sensational becomes immortalized and deserving of deference.
The media’s cry for stricter gun control will not deter someone from committing these types of crimes. They have already decided to break the law once in planning to commit murder. Another law will not change this.
Also, restricting the mentally ill from owning guns is a slippery slope. What defines mentally ill? If one gets depressed, suffers from gender dysphoria, suffers from a learning disability, and or is autistic, should one be restricted from owning or possessing a firearm. I agree people who are sociopaths and schizophrenics should not own guns, but truly crazy people must agree to submit to a mental health evaluation, unless they are already dangerous. So, how can we screen for dangerous people before they commit the crime, nation-wide mandatory screenings?
In regards to the 33 people who died from the flu, it was within one week in January in Minnesota. During the time it was reported, Minnesota’s death toll due to influenza rose to 60. Still, no national outcry or nation-wide vigil, because the deaths did not involve a gun.
This means we need to enact flu control laws immediately!
Oh wait. You can’t control the flu with laws. But you can restrict the availability and purchase of military weapons and high-capacity magazines with laws. Guess you’re too stupid to understand the distinction.
REALLY Sappho? Sad thing is, you find your reasoning sound.
Really? Godslayer and Jessain you missed my point entirely. Instead of enacting laws which can easily be broken, we need to focus on the source of the problem, structural violence.
I only provided a different point of view. You can chose to disagree with me; it is no skin off my nose. I do not condone what Adam Lanza did, but I do not see the logic in spending months on end revisiting his gruesome murder, either. Especially, when many more are dying from preventable diseases! Yet, the nation will spend more time focusing on gun control, than funding programs which prevent deaths due to preventable disease. The government has been cutting funding to these programs, by the way, to fund their ballooning Homeland Security budget.
You do not have to resort to personal attacks just because I voice my opinion. By doing so, you prove only my point.
…..No, they’re right. You’re comparing mass murder/an act of madmen with deaths by disease as if they’re equal. That’s apples and cinder blocks, couldn’t get any different. Not to mention the fact that 20 brutally murdered 5 yr olds and several teachers is slightly more news worthy than statewide flu deaths. Point taken though, they definitely focus on the already sensational and what can be sensationalized, you just had a strange (and rather unfocused) way of saying it.
It was not as unfocused as you might think. Children are dying from preventable diseases and the government diverts funding from programs which can stop them to fund their war on terror. The media does not focus on this; the nation does not focus on this. Yet, it is just as monstrous as Adam Lanza’s assault; it is just not as dramatic.
Godslayer disagreed with me, because he or she did not read or understand my post. Jessain, I do not know.
I understand completely that being murdered and dying from natural causes is not the same. However, it does not sit well with me that we only seem to come together when it is a tragedy such as this. To hell with those who die from poverty, disease, hunger, or some other malfeasance of society; all of which are preventable. Even rampages like Adam Lanza’s are preventable, if our communities quit marginalizing their own people.
I was also showing disdain for the disgusting voyeuristic treatment the media gave this egregious display, and their shoddy paranoid portrayal of autism. I wanted to point out these types of murders are rare and often performed by broken young men.
Instead of addressing my entire post, you focus on the middle just to question my reasoning. You may have found it relativistic or unfocused, but I just wanted to get some thoughtful discussion going.
It was never the intent to compare those deaths to others. Death is death. To me, saying someone’s death is greater over another’s because of circumstance is the same as saying one person’s life was greater than another’s. It was probably never your intent to mean it that way, but that is how it sounds.
Well, it was another great article by Mark. How about I just leave it at that.