The media knows how to manipulate you. They run stories to make minor things seem like bigger issues. They refuse to cover big issues or cover them in ways that minimize the facts. All sorts of tricks they can employ to make it seem like things are different from what they really are.
But every now and then, they try it and it blows up in their face. When it does, it's glorious, and it just happened on their gun control narrative.
It started with a shooting at a party. A high school football player was killed, which was all the media machine needed. They started running stories, talking about how awful so-called gun violence is and why we need gun control. The usual stuff, really.
Yet, it seems all of that came to a screeching halt when the truth became known.
In a shocking turn of events, Fort Wayne, Indiana, police have determined that a high school football player, initially reported as a tragic victim and the lone person to die from a mass shooting at a weekend Halloween party, was in fact the aggressor who entered the party and began shooting. Willie Ivy III, 17, opened fire after forcing his way into the crowded party, injuring nine people ranging in ages from 14 to 20 before an armed partygoer returned fire, killing him in what authorities have determined was an act of justifiable self-defense. Interestingly, despite the intense initial coverage surrounding Ivy’s death portraying him as a loving, ambitious member of his school football team and another tragic case of an innocent black youth caught up in gun violence, when it was learned he was the one who opened fire first, media attention of the case went comparatively dark.
Follow-up articles merely mentioned he was the shooter and noted that police weren’t going to charge the man who shot him. Was it a case of the narrative no longer fit what the media wanted to sell or had the news cycle merely gone cold on the topic? It’s hard to say. But after all the positive coverage of the young “victim,” once the truth was discovered, an examination of what caused this otherwise seemingly good kid to carry a gun into a party and begin gunning down innocent victims begs for some follow-up from the local media.
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Initially, media coverage centered on Ivy’s death and his identity as a North Side High School football player, with statements from family members grieving his passing. Ivy’s father, who traveled from Memphis, reflected on a final phone conversation with his son, where they said “I love you” before he left for the party.
“He was supposed to make it—he was supposed to go to college, he was supposed to watch over his sisters,” Ivy’s father told 21 Alive News.
“There’s no doubt about him being a loved child and he showed that in his actions with his friends and his family,” Vickii Ivy, the shooter’s aunt, said. “He just had this spirit of love for everybody that was around him.” She noted that he “did not follow or go to trouble.”
Honestly, it wouldn't have taken long to dig out the details, that this "he was supposed to make it" kid took a gun he was too young to lawfully posses to a party, opened fire, shooting nine people before an armed citizen put a round in him and took him down.
It shouldn't have taken all that long, and reporting on the story should have been a bit more restrained, but they saw an opportunity.
Young people gunned down is going to be tragic enough, but then when you have the whole thing about saying "I love you" to his mom and how he was going to go to college and make everything great in life, only to see it snuffed out in an instant is even more tragic.
They ran with it because they knew it would make a great story, one that might pressure lawmakers from the area to push for gun control. Indiana is a pretty pro-gun state, after all, and we know how the media tends to feel about that sort of thing.
They ran with it, which is bad enough.
What bothers me is that the media coverage abruptly shifted. No more was it about this young black kid being gunned down before his life ever started, it was as if they'd never reported that. It was like that coverage never happened. They didn't delve into anything deeper, which would at least be intellectually honest. They suddenly decided it was just about the facts.
But here's the thing. This is exactly what they do.
For example, look at all the reports on "ghost guns" and how these unserialized firearms are a growing threat and need to be addressed. Now, find statistics for these guns. There aren't many floating around, but what we find is that they're nowhere near as common as the media would have you believe. Look at "mass shootings." They use the Gun Violence Archive's numbers uncritically, ignoring older and more trustworthy databases because that gives them the scariest totals.
While violence committed with firearms is a very real thing, what we have with the media is a case of them doing everything they can to manipulate the facts and make it sound like the problem is worse than it is, right up until they need you to think the problem isn't that bad. They don't even pretend to be concerned with the rank hypocrisy of their reporting, either.
Why? Why do they do this?
Because while they love their freedom of the press, preserved in the First Amendment, they want to trample on your right to keep and bear arms.
So that's your daily reminder that no matter how much you hate the media, you don't hate them enough.