Fox Promotes Gun Banners’ Propaganda—Again
In a recent gun-related article, Fox News had space to repeat anti-rights propaganda:
“States with the highest levels of gun ownership have 114 percent higher firearm homicide rates and 60 percent higher homicide rates than states with the lowest gun ownership.”
Here’s the problem: Journalists should report what’s told them by their sources, so including statements like the one above, even if you disagree, is reasonable. But if Fox is “fair and balanced,” shouldn’t they also present data from the other side?
“Don’t Kill a Dream” runs gun turn-ins in Chicago, posts these “statistics” on their Gun Facts page. So including them is truthful copy. But their “facts” are mostly lies.
For example, they claim: “Gun death rates are 7 times higher in the states with the highest compared with the lowest household gun ownership.”
The gun ownership data comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which ran Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys in 2001 and 2002.
In 2001, the state (Wyoming) with the highest “gun death” rate in 2001 had 3.7 times the total rate as the lowest (Hawaii). In 2002, it was 6.5 times higher (same states). With a little rounding you get your “7 times higher.” But that’s where the truth ends and data manipulation begins.
Their mortality data comes from the CDC, too. The CDC includes Washington D.C. in their “state-level” selection window. The FBI does likewise in their annual “state-level” crime reports.
Because D.C.—a self-governing entity with a population larger than Wyoming—is the deadliest jurisdiction in American, it behooves anti-rights propagandists to ignore it in order to produce prettier results.
Here’s their problem: D.C. had the lowest gun ownership rates. Comparing Wyoming to D.C. shows that D.C. had a 50% higher total firearms death rate than Wyoming in 2001, and 76% higher in 2002.
They must have done similar fudging in order to claim that higher gun ownership means higher firearms homicide rates. In both 2001 and 2002, states with the lowest firearms were the deadliest, averaging the highest firearms and non-firearms homicide rates (see table below). For both years, the Spearman’s correlation coefficient (Rho) indicated a fair to strong negative values: As gun ownership increased, firearms homicide decreased.
This isn’t the first time we’ve caught Fox doing this to the Second Amendment.
Were Fox “fair and balanced,” it seems reasonable they would have included some vetting like this, instead of a major media outlet lending credence to anti-rights lies by simply repeating them unchallenged.
FOX unfortunately is in the process of deliberately trying to “lamestream” itself. Giving FOX’s continued ratings sweeps against the MSM I think there is an opprotunity for another right-center meadia outlet to give FOX a little honest competition and further erode the leftist MSM.
is pushing his weight around on every issue now
For reference purposes: “The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king.”
Alaweed is also a main backer of Ground Zero mosque.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129584557
They’re still journalists — uneducated, self-important, and utterly intent that everyone be slaves.
The article that I read was how a downstate, youth gun club basically scammed the gun buy back program by selling them a bunch of rusty, junk fireams and used the proceeds to buy new firearms and ammo for the kids. Where were the stats referenced to in this PJ article?
I provided a link to the CDC mortality data, as well as to the anti-gun organization’s claims. The Fox article is also linked to. The club followed the rules of the gun buyback, otherwise the police wouldn’t have given out the debit cards.
The buyback is the true scam here, trading in junk guns for cash and feel-good wishes, while ignoring the reality that bad guys don’t sell their working guns. Nor does this stop the black market which always exists despite what’s done to punish law-abiding citizens.
I’ve been compiling CDC and FBI data for about 8 years now. The table was derived from 2 of my Excel workbooks compiled from CDC gun ownership and mortality data.
Fox was my number one news channel but they are leaning way to far to left for me. I’m sure they are seeing their viewership declining. I am not the only one tuning out.
No, Sue, you’re not the only one tuning out. Fox has been leaving an increasingly bad taste in my mouth; the final straw, for me, was when they went into the tank, hardcore, for Mitt, before the Iowa caucus. I now get my news from a combination of internet, newspapers, talk radio, and CNBC. I agree with rip300rog; there’s room for a center-right news network to compete with Fox.
Read John Lott, “More Guns, Less Crime.” His stats have never been successfully refuted. End of story.
Oh by the way, I hear private gun ownership is actually illegal in Mexico.
Not if your wealthy and connected. Dave Kopel’s work on Mexico’s gun laws is highly recommended.
http://www.davekopel.com/espanol/Mexican-Gun-Laws.htm
Fox has never been fair, balanced, or even largely truthful about a lot of things. That this is the case here is not a surprise.
We quit watching Fox News a long time ago. Bunch of sell-outs, especially Shepherd Smith and Bill O’Reilly
So where is the stat elucidating which of these gun deaths where folks who really needed killing?
That would be justifiable homicides. I’m working on a major paper covering that topic. That data comes from the FBI Supplemental Homicide Report, an annual database available on request that must be converted from text file format to Access and Excel.