Les Jones

Media Behaving Badly > 14 Year Old's "Arsenal" was Plastic BB Guns

You're probably heard the story of the 14 year old who planned an attack on his school. I caught it on the CBS Evening News. Not once during their broadcast did they let on to the fact that the "arsenal" consisted of one 9 mm his mother bought and a bunch of AirSoft plastic BB guns. One shot zoomed in on AirSoft AK-47 and said, in amazement, that the boy's mother bought him this "assault rifle." Which is a plastic BB gun.

Which would be worse - CBS not knowing the arsenal consisted of BB guns, or knowing and not bothering to tell the viewer?

Fox News is similarly overplaying the story. They say his mother bought her son a "9 mm assault rifle," which is an oxymoron, but the press never misses a chance to call some an assault rifle. They at least seem aware that not all of the guns are real, though they refer to the AirSofts as "30 air-powered guns."

MSNBC is a model of good reporting by comparison.

P.S. - It isn't my intention to defend a 14 year old maniac. It's just galling to see national news organizations sensationalizing a story to the point of malpractice. And knowing how the messed up this story doesn't fill me with confidence about any of their other coverage. Paging Michael Crichton:

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.