2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,969
- 52,237
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Anti gun journalists can't tell a story about guns without lying..........and yet we are supposed to trust them to be honest negotiators where our gun rights are concerned....
Evaluating the New York Times' investigative report: "A Drumbeat of Multiple Shootings, but America Isn’t Listening" - Crime Prevention Research Center
“The Times compiled its list of 358 shootings with four or more casualties from largely crowd-sourced lists managed by the social media network Reddit and Gun Violence Archive”
There is a reason that researchers generally rely on FBI and CDC data rather than media reports. News stories often contain only the first, breaking information about a case. The FBI and CDC followed the investigations for these cases and found whether they involved self-defense or accidents or were gang-related.
Relatively few news stories explicitly state whether gangs are involved, and the Gun Violence Archive appears to only count instances where the news stories explicitly mention gangs.
The New York Times writes: “Where motives could be gleaned, roughly half [of mass shootings] involved or suggested crime or gang activity.” But this means that, even by their own count, the true number of these cases is above fifty perfect.
The Times reports that for mass shootings: “Nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black. Some experts suggest that helps explain why the drumbeat of dead and wounded does not inspire more outrage.” But an alternative explanation is that gang fights over drug turf don’t draw the same attention as other types of shootings. Gang members, after all, are relatively unsympathetic individuals.
To study this issue, the Times would need to find out the amount of media coverage given to gang shootings where the victims are black. Then the Times would need to do the same for whites, and compare the two results. To see whether the difference is related to the type of shooting, the Times would need to compare media coverage of gang shootings with that of non-gang shootings. But this is not what the Times does.
Though immensely better than relying on news stories, the federal data are not perfect. The federal data rely on data from the individual police departments, and it is clear that they rarely go back and adjust justifiable homicide data after the conclusion of an investigation. Instead, the data are based on preliminary assessments of whether the homicide was justifiable.
Evaluating the New York Times' investigative report: "A Drumbeat of Multiple Shootings, but America Isn’t Listening" - Crime Prevention Research Center
“The Times compiled its list of 358 shootings with four or more casualties from largely crowd-sourced lists managed by the social media network Reddit and Gun Violence Archive”
There is a reason that researchers generally rely on FBI and CDC data rather than media reports. News stories often contain only the first, breaking information about a case. The FBI and CDC followed the investigations for these cases and found whether they involved self-defense or accidents or were gang-related.
Relatively few news stories explicitly state whether gangs are involved, and the Gun Violence Archive appears to only count instances where the news stories explicitly mention gangs.
The New York Times writes: “Where motives could be gleaned, roughly half [of mass shootings] involved or suggested crime or gang activity.” But this means that, even by their own count, the true number of these cases is above fifty perfect.
The Times reports that for mass shootings: “Nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black. Some experts suggest that helps explain why the drumbeat of dead and wounded does not inspire more outrage.” But an alternative explanation is that gang fights over drug turf don’t draw the same attention as other types of shootings. Gang members, after all, are relatively unsympathetic individuals.
To study this issue, the Times would need to find out the amount of media coverage given to gang shootings where the victims are black. Then the Times would need to do the same for whites, and compare the two results. To see whether the difference is related to the type of shooting, the Times would need to compare media coverage of gang shootings with that of non-gang shootings. But this is not what the Times does.
Though immensely better than relying on news stories, the federal data are not perfect. The federal data rely on data from the individual police departments, and it is clear that they rarely go back and adjust justifiable homicide data after the conclusion of an investigation. Instead, the data are based on preliminary assessments of whether the homicide was justifiable.
