Article Originally Posted on BearingArms.com
Sourced from: https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/05/25/cbs-news-editorialize-n70837
We here at Bearing Arms have no pretension of being unbiased. As a result, you folks reading this have an idea of where we stand on issues. For those who agree, that’s why you’re here. For those who don’t, you know to filter things through the appropriate lens.
But places like CBS News still want you to think they’re unbiased.
That gets harder and harder every single year. Especially with headlines like this: “Texas senator continues to call for common sense gun safety laws”
Now, let’s start by noting that a Texas state senator continuing calls for gun control is newsworthy to some degree, especially in light of the Uvalde anniversary.
The subject matter is arguably appropriate and as this is labeled as “local news” on the CBS News site, it makes sense.
Yet that label also presents a bit of a problem.
See, one of the first things you need to do if you’re going to at least pretend to be neutral is leave your editorializing out of the headline.
For anti-gun folks, they don’t see an issue. Pro-Second Amendment folks, though, can see it plain as day. The phrase “common sense gun safety laws” isn’t an official term rooted in neutrality. It’s the exact way gun control organizations frame the laws they’re trying to push onto the American people.
Had the reporter for CBS News put the phrase in quotations, then he’s just repeating what the senator may have said.
Instead, it’s presented to the world as if this is an established fact.
I hate to break it to him, though. It’s not.
Take the policy measures mentioned in the piece:
At a 45-minute news conference Gutierrez hosted at the Capitol earlier this month he said, “Every time something happens it’s something else and he’s got a solution for this that’s not related to the common denominator which is guns.”
…
In an interview with CBS News Texas earlier this month, Gutierrez told me none of his gun safety bills received a hearing in the Senate, including a raise the age bill, universal background checks, and red flag laws. “It’s very clear here the Republicans’ position on gun reform they don’t want to try.”
Raising the age to buy an AR-15 only looks like it might prevent something bad from happening in a case like Uvalde, but the truth is that most people in that age group who buy those rifles do so because they want something they can use to defend themselves. Raising the age limit won’t stop bad people from getting guns–how many mass shooters have we seen who were too young to own any firearm?–but it will stop these law-abiding adults from owning guns.
That’s just common sense.
Universal background checks only look like a common sense gun measure because the media has done such a near-universal job of making them look like one. They don’t discuss how this doesn’t actually impact black market gun sales, it only inhibits law-abiding citizens transferring guns to one another. That’s literally all it does.
Red flag laws have tons of problems, problems which the media refuses to challenge proponents on. Besides the oft-cited due process concerns, there’s the simple fact that you’re saying someone is too dangerous to exercise their constitutionally protected rights but is just fine walking around on the streets.
Where’s the common sense there?
CBS News editorializing these policy measures as common sense doesn’t change the fact that they’re not. All it does is make it impossible to take anything else they say seriously on the issue of guns.
Their lack of neutrality is clear; so clear that even those on the fence about whether the media is biased should be able to see it for themselves.
Want to know why the polls look to be against us? It’s because the entire media apparatus is doing stuff like this.
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