Media Incoherence: Part 774898793874

Someone asked me recently why the media doesn’t highlight cases where someone with a gun stopped a bad person from doing something bad. This got me thinking.

I’ve heard the excuses, and I’m sure you have too. “If we make those people seem like heroes, it will prompt ‘vigilante justice’ and we don’t want that.” Or, “It will make people think they need to take the law into their own hands.” You know the drill. The media will make excuses for their failure to sensationalize actual acts of heroism when a gun is involved and the gun happens to be in the hands of the hero, not the bad guy.

This is the type of incoherence we get from the left – c’mon, let’s stop pretending the vast majority of journalists out there aren’t leftists, okay?

You see, the agenda here is: Guns are bad, mmmkay? So anything that would paint guns in a positive light is downplayed, even frowned upon. It must be so. The idiot masses (in their view) can’t think they can take personal responsibility for their lives, that’s the government’s job.

This isn’t a two way street, though. If it were, the same media wouldn’t sensationalize the cases where lunatics go on rampages using guns. Their logic would dictate that the same sensationalism would lead to more lunatics, seeing that they can become famous (even in death – they’re lunatics, after all), plotting murderous rampages and carrying them out. Why wouldn’t they? They can get their names plastered on the front pages of newspapers and websites for weeks. They can be held up as examples of evil (this is a good thing for them – again, they’re lunatics). They become infamous. Immortal.

For all the criticism the left (and some on the right) heaped on the NRA chairman when he responded to the Newtown attack, he was right. The media is part of the problem. Their selective coverage, their sensationalism of tragedy (usually to push an agenda) causes more tragedy because they’re appealing to lunatics.

Why not appeal to the rational people? Why not show people that they can rely on themselves in times of peril?

Because that hurts the left’s agenda.