Last week, when the first news of the Washington Navy Yard shooting broke out, I thought to myself “let’s sit out these first reports – because whatever the mainstream media reports for the first 4-6 hours will be not just wrong, but hysterical and the result of templates being filled in from the MSM/Democrat narrative”.
In watching the coverage of the Washington Navy Yard shooting as it unfolded last Monday, I had to remind myself that most of the reports I was hearing would surely turn out to be incorrect, in some cases wildly so. And indeed this turned out to be the case. We were told, for example, that there was more than one gunman, and that one of them was armed with an AR-15 rifle. Even worse, both CBS and NBC identified the wrong man as the shooter before issuing retractions.
The first of these errors is the most understandable. In the rush to beat their competitors, the editing filters ordinarily in place are often put aside in favor of greater speed. Reports from the scene, no matter how unverifiable, are broadcast live so as to be first on the air. Again, understandable and even forgivable in most cases.
Less so is the misidentification of the shooter’s weapon.
I’m going to guess that the writer (PJM’s Jack Dunphy) and I aren’t the only ones.
I’d love to ask a mainstream media figure – is your industry’s adherence to Democrat narratives (and in some cases money) worth the damage your credibility is taking among people who pay attention?
I’d love to ask a mainstream media figure – is your industry’s adherence to Democrat narratives (and in some cases money) worth the damage your credibility is taking among people who pay attention?
Of course it is, Mitch. The people who pay attention are a small cohort and their votes count just as much as yours does. In some cases, their votes might count twice.
It all reminds me of the scene in “What about Bob?” where the psychiatrist gone psycho is threatening “Bob” with an over-under shotgun, but the psychoatrist (?) calls it a rifle.
He got a new job with MSNBC, apparently.
Seriously, one would hope that as the victims arrived at the hospital–or even before that–that there would be some journalist bright enough to figure out that dozens/hundreds of wounds in a Poisson distribution are unlikely to be from a rifle. Apparently, however, I am wrong.
For that matter, it did appear in the early hours after the attack that doctors were calling it rifle wounds when it was in reality shotgun wounds–at least for those that the perpetrator killed. Sorry, I’d have to assume that doctors in DC of all places would know the difference from across the room. The only defense I can come up with is that some of the wounded and killed were accidentally shot by guards, which isn’t terribly comforting, either.
I think we sub-contracted this guy as a worker here at the DDE, fuck…
A certain amount of honest misidentification due to a short timeline and lack of technical knowledge can be understood, if not justified.
My literary hero, Tom Wolfe, in his most recent work, Back to Blood, refers to the Miami police officer main character’s duty weapon, a Glock Model 19 as his “service revolver.” That really threw me since Wolfe is usually quite precise in everything he writes. None the less, he’s probably not a gun guy. I sense no bad intent (and even wonder if the error was intentional for some obscure Wolfe-ish reason).
However, the intent of the recent misdirections by the MSM is absolutely clear to those who don’t just scan the headlines. Plus, they don’t even try to un-ring the bell with retractions or clarifications at the bottom of page 27.