To: Rachel Stassen-Berger, Tom Scheck, Pat Kessler, Bill Salisbury, Tim Pugmire, John Cronan, Tom Leyden, David Brauer, Erik Black, and all of the various other Deans Of The Capitol Press Corps their respective news directors and editors:
From: Mitch Berg, noisome peasant
Re: Huh?
All,
When covering the “Stand Your Ground” bill at the legislature, you all continue to quote the likes of Heather Martens, David Kolb and Jim Backstrom.
And yet everything any of them has ever said on the subject of gun control, the Second Amendment, and above all the consequences of “liberalizing” gun laws for the law abiding has been, always and with no exceptions, not only wrong, but completely the opposite of the truth. As in, devoid of not just fact, but truth. Nothing. Zip. Bupkes. Never one iota of fact.
They are “sources” that have burned you, as reporters, every single time you’ve cited them on Second Amendment issues. No exceptions.
Now, I was a reporter. Not a great one – serviceable is the word – but even I knew that if you had a source that never, ever, not once, did anything but discredit your reporting on an issue, you stopped using the source, or at least corroborated everything they said with a reliable one. Even if I didn’t know better, my editors would usually insist on it. I mean, if there were three sources that consistently either botched the story or just plain lied to you about, say, the budget or a Senator’s affair, you’d drop ’em off your Rolodex – right?
So is there some exception to this for Second Amendment issues, or are you all that genuinely incurious about the facts on this issue?
I’m genuinely curious. Have your people call my people.
That is all.
Tee Hee! Silly Mitch! Your admonitions are falling on deaf ears and blind eyes. But hey, none of them can ever say that they didn’t know!
I mean, if there were three sources that consistently either botched the story or just plain lied to you about, say, the budget or a Senator’s affair, you’d drop ‘em off your Rolodex – right?
Nah — they have really small rolodexes in this town. Your average reporter can talk to Martens or Backstrom on gun control, or to the Fab Four ( David Schultz, Larry Jacobs, Stephen Schier and Kathryn Pearson) for political analysis. If you’re pressed for time, it’s a lot easier to fill a notebook or a two-minute segment if you can use a reliable (and narrative-friendly!) rent-a-quote from these always-available folks. And more importantly, it’s easier to get your piece past the editors if you include these vetted purveyors of approved analysis in your work. No need to rewrite if you got David Schultz in there!
Meanwhile, did you catch Sack’s cartoon today? More genius level commentary on the issues of the day.
Mr D’s on to it. These people are not accurately described as journalists or reporters. “Propagandist” is a more accurate description. When you have given up any semblance of journalistic integrity and have thrown your whole lot into pushing an agenda, rather than reporting the facts and news, truth has no importance.
If any of the above named “reporters” reads this blog, you can invalidate everything I’ve said by including quotes in your articles from the likes of Mitch, David Gross, or someone who is NOT a gun-control proponent. Note: That group DOES NOT include chiefs of police, for they are no longer patrol officers, but politicians.
Heck, even a 30 second search of google for “Minneapolis pro-gun lawyer” brings up several sources who would be considered an authority of the opposing views (and lies) spouted by the likes of Martens, Backstrom, and Kolb.
The propaganda from the left is not a matter to take lightly. http://boogiefinger.blogspot.com/2012/02/occupy-propaganda-machine-campaign.html The new left are not even democrats and will resort to any dirty trick to win. Howard Zinn describes the synthesis of the left http://youtu.be/6s2z9lefWaA
Dan K
Well, I’m certain Mitch, that you are not holding your breath waiting for a response.
If you did get one, I’d ask a follow-up: Whenever a state enacts a ‘millionaires’ tax, the amount of revenue actually raised comes no where close to projected amount and in fact the number of ‘millionaires’ (in scare quotes due to the fact that ‘millionaire’ now describes anyone making more than 200K) generally declines by half or more. Yet reporters dutifully scribble out whatever projections come from the governor, legislators and of course, the all knowing and unbiased (even though their jobs are on-the-line if ‘the number’ isn’t what the elected officials want) state budget officials and report it without any context that these millionaire taxes don’t bring in the revenue promised and mostly serve to drive ‘rich’ people away from the states that have them (well and there is also the get-even-with’em factor to consider). Again, don’t hold your breath waiting for this to come up at a press conference near you.
C’mon. It’s liberal reverse-o-world these days, Mitch. We got an attorney general who won’t enforce the laws, a constitutionally elected prez who doesn’t believe in the constitution, a Transportation Security Agency that thinks its job is to make you fell insecure when traveling, and an energy secretary who wants Americans to have the opposite of cheap, plentiful energy. And you expected a reliable source to be reliable?
Yes, everybodies making valid points. There is a great reporter in town, though. Tom Hauser does remind me of Tim Russert, willing to rough up Conservative and Lib alike.
….far and away my favorite local reporter….
Did you see him confront those Demkompoops offering the $1,000 for proof of voter fraud? If anybody collects that prize, it might be him….
Joe Deal, remember that liberals always use the Brennan Center for Justice definition of voter fraud:
http://truthaboutfraud.org/pdf/TruthAboutVoterFraud.pdf
So, if an SEIU or ACORN operative picks a group of people in precinct A, drives them to precinct B, and has them register and vote in that precinct, no voter fraud has occurred unless you can prove that the people in the van knew they were ineligible to vote in precinct B. The SEIU or ACORN operative isn’t guilty of voter fraud because he or she has not cast a vote.
Nice definition, eh? Yet liberals will hold to this definition as though it was the word of God come down from Zion rather than admit that it is a contrivance that, combined with sloppy registration policies and lack of voter ID requirements, insures that it is very easy to vote illegally, but very difficult to prove “voter fraud”.
The definition is a bad joke. The Brennan Center didn’t go through some rigorous, quasi-legal process to come up with their definition of voter fraud. They adopted it from this thing: http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/PoliticsofVoterFraudFinal.pdf
It was a white paper written by a political scientist named Lorraine Minnite, commissioned by Project Vote. It is a political definition, not a legal definition. In fact, in the section of the paper where the Brennan Center references her paper for its definition of voter fraud, Minnite writes:
Yet liberals treat the Brennan Center definition as though it were the legal definition of voter fraud.
Since the Brennan Center definition of voter fraud is used universally by anti-voter-ID forces, I would urge conservatives interested in the issue to read the Minnite paper I linked above, I don’t think many liberals have — it definitively states that about 8 people a year have been convicted of voter fraud in the 21st century. Not many, but beginning by refuting the notion that “there is no voter fraud” is a good place to start. Minnite also mentions cases where public and party officials have plead guilty to conspiring to defraud election officials, and act Minnite calls “election fraud”, not “voter fraud”.
Again, the Brennan Center for Justice definition of voter fraud is bogus. It has no legal standing.
Meanwhile, did you catch Sack’s cartoon today? I actually did. My once in a fortnight perusal of the local fish wrap. Reminded me of why I don’t read that piece of noisome crap.
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