Conservatives have had a growing mistrust of the media on various subjects and for a multitude of reasons. Most reporting on gun violence and mass shootings illustrate why that is so. Lois Beckett, who is a senior reporter for the British paper The Guardian here in the United States. She was assigned exclusively to cover guns, gun violence, and the far right.
This morning on Twitter she posted a thread that I hope all reporters who sincerely want to report the truth and not advance an agenda will read.
The @GuardianUS decided to dedicate a reporter to the gun beat in early 2016, so lots of thoughts about this @secupp @brianstelter conversation: https://t.co/oGQ53k7WLs
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Agree with @secupp on this: When we talk about why conservative Americans distrust the media–why our credibility is so damaged–gun reporting is a crucial part of that story.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Was talking to a gun owner in Louisiana a few months ago about this, and he said: when newspapers report on a car crash, they don't just get the make of the car wrong, or include basic errors about cars and how they work.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Yet big news outlets often make basic technical mistakes in talking about guns and gun laws. And yet they don't correct them. They keep making the same mistakes. And that tells gun owners that they don't care about accuracy, that they're not interested in getting it right.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
If you're a gun owner, and you're seeing blatant errors and exaggeration and a tone of hysteria in the media about a consumer product that *you own,* about something that is *in your house,* why should you trust journalists reporting on other issues you might not know firsthand?
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
As a journalist I know how hard we work, how much we get right, how accurate we are most of the time. Yet these small technical errors about guns, and our choice of tone in talking about firearms–they have done so much broader damage to our credibility.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Last year, I listened to so many media discussions about "Why don't conservatives believe facts any more?" And as a gun beat reporter, it was so obvious: We are getting some facts wrong. Some of our coverage has clear cultural biases. Gun coverage is one dramatic example.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
It's also true, as @JimLaPorta put it, that the demands for technical expertise about guns before you can have an opinion on them can go too far! Especially just for opinion-having: https://t.co/mNqOqsZeeW
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Also worth saying that way political partisanship is just one piece of this. There are many kinds of tensions between the reality of violence in America, and the stories Americans tell themselves about it.
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
One tiny example: flawed studies showing that gun control laws could have a huge effect often make headlines: https://t.co/wmgJZVF2N2 This study, by some of America's top gun violence researchers, found a different result, and got almost no coverage: https://t.co/sq1uvEWY2S
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Do you look at that and see partisanship in news coverage of gun studies? Or actually just a larger bias towards research with dramatic results, that point to clear and simple action? Who wants to read about a study showing that reality is messy and it's hard to make stuff work?
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
If you want to talk about "what liberals get wrong about guns," of course, you should also talk about "what conservatives get wrong about violence." There are deep, bipartisan misconceptions about what gun violence looks like, and what might fix it. https://t.co/4T4c7Kj97A
— Lois Beckett (@loisbeckett) February 23, 2018
Now I don’t agree with everything that Beckett writes, but I respect the fact that she strives to get the facts right and understand both points of view. Too many reporters approach this subject with political and cultural bias and come at it with an agenda. Hence CNN ends up hosting a gun control rally in place of what was supposed to be a town hall. Gun violence and the gun debate are complex issues, and it requires research and to listen to victims and gun owners.
Unfortunately, the focus in much of the reporting I’ve read has been on the wrong things when it comes to the cause of gun violence and what to do to prevent it.