The Issues With Media Coverage Of Gun Control Debate

The post-Newtown debate over new gun control laws has stirred fiery passions on both sides of the aisle. But, as Walter Shapiro notes in the Columbia Journalism Review, the journalism around it has focused far more on the emotions around the debate than the policy implications.

The flaws in the media’s gun control reporting are, as Shapiro describes:

Gun-control proposals are ranked based on the ferocity of likely opposition from the National Rifle Association rather than on the legislation’s potential ability to save lives. As a result, readers get the sense that an assault weapons ban would reduce gun violence more than expanded background checks, which in turn would be more effective than gun trafficking legislation. But this rock-paper-scissors hierarchy is entirely based on politics (what might pass Congress) rather what might prevent another massacre in an elementary school or movie theater.

Reporters on the gun-control beat often failed to offer evidence to suggest how many of America’s roughly 30,000 gun deaths per year would be prevented if any of these bills passed Congress—no way to judge or compare their value. Imagine if press coverage of the sequester never revealed that $85 billion in arbitrary cuts were at stake. Or if news stories on the withdrawal from Afghanistan forgot to mention that more than 2,100 American military personnel have died in that theater since 2001. Statistics like Congressional Budget Office cost estimates and think-tank calculations are a staple of policy debates in Washington in virtually every other arena other than gun legislation.

While Shapiro is right to note this failing on the media’s part, it can’t be blamed entirely on lazy journalism. Since the mid-1990s, the Centers for Disease Control has been prohibited from doing any studies about firearms safety, a prohibition that was expanded in 2011 to every agency under the aegis of the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2010, there were about 30,000 deaths due to firearms in the United States, 2/3rds of which were suicides. At this point, as many American are killed by firearms as are killed in traffic accidents. Yet while the government spends untold millions to prevent traffic deaths, it is legally prohibited from conducting studies on how to prevent deaths by firearms.

Reporters should look for more data and get a better sense of what the policy repercussions of proposed policy repercussions. But they can’t be expected to conduct medical research on their own.

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