PBS/Frontline's hit piece on the NRA - a view inside the propaganda machine of the anti-gun Left

[MrNatural]

In case any FUDD you know thinks we are dealing with an honest, reasonable opposition, send them a link to this.

We are dealing with a hard-core minority of skilled left-wing propagandists desperately trying to create a voting army of (mostly female) "True Believers" who are completely factually ignorant but fanatically convinced of the rightness of their cause.

Facts to the contrary need not apply. Because you CANNOT have a rational discussion with a True Believer. Having adopted a position based on emotion, they are now invulnerable to facts or to the truth itself.

That is the goal of:

GUNNED DOWN: THE POWER OF THE NRA

You can go to the PBS web site to watch it

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gunned-down/

or you can watch on youtube:

GO AND WATCH IT NOW.

While you watch, keep in mind a few things about the presentation.

"Reason cannot displace what Reason did not emplace."

"The only effective defense against truth is emotion.

The show opens with a massacre, to put the audience in the right frame of mind. After about 15 min of priming the audience's hormonal pump, the VILLAIN is introduced, the NRA, personified by Wayne LaPierre.

The Narrative requires a principal straw-man Villain for all to see! With personalities and emotions, but never the detailed facts.

Notice that NO technical, legal or constitutional fact details about the history of gun control proposals are discussed. Just the controversies involved. In other words THE EMOTIONS.

The 2nd Amendment is mentioned a total of ONCE, in one brief passing sentence in the middle of the show. The US Constitution is not part of the Narrative.

The ATF debacle at WACO is NEVER mentioned at all. Much less as a factor in the resurgence of progun voters and anger at the anti-gun agenda under the Clinton administration.

Although the entire show is about Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, NO CURRENT OFFICER OF THE NRA WAS INTERVIEWED OR ALLOWED TO SPEAK FOR THE SHOW. A brief blurb at the end claims they refused - gee, imagine that. Only chosen blurbs of news footage are shown and a few former NRA officers and lobbyists.

Gotta keep to the Narrative. Real facts just get in the way.

Persons quoted are always quoted in snippets. The only context allowed is by the Frontline producer's Narrative.

There is NO examination of the ineffectiveness of antigun efforts to date (especially the disasterous outcomes in England and Australia). OR the fact that none of the antigun proposals would have stopped ANY of the school massacres that have prompted the outrage. Because that would spoil the Narrative.

A few of the many other American progun groups are mentioned only once and briefly. Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership are not mentioned at all. (Gotta conform to that narrative!).

What is mentioned, over and over, are PEOPLE, RELATIONSHIPS and EMOTION, EMOTION, EMOTION. In other words it is presented JUST LIKE A SOAP OPERA EPISODE. Targeted toward exactly the same audience.

Yeah, its all about the NARRATIVE: ALL GUNS EVIL. WILL KILL YOUR CHILDREN. NRA KILL YOUR CHILDREN. EVIL EVIL NRA!

This has been only a VERY brief summary of some of the propaganda techniques involved. But just being aware of them is being forearmed.

George Orwell once wrote that the meanest propaganda comes not from telling lies, but from suppressing parts of the truth. (I can't find the exact quote).

Please feel free to chime in on the propaganda techniques you notice in the production that I have missed.

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[BAMCIS]

I watched it. Even joined the discussion as they encouraged during the show. I tried and tried to use reason and facts, but me and others like me (and us) are in the minority.

I tried to explain the whole premise was wrong. It should have been entitled something like "Guns UP! What the NRA does to preserve the Bill of Rights". That did not go over well.

As you said MrNatural, they are so emotionally invested in their "position" there is no way to have a logical discussion with them. But we must never give up or give in.

 

[Gunguy45]

It's a slick piece of propaganda in that it doesn't so much lie or distort, it just entirely omits any other POV.

It starts with the (unstated but clear) premise that "The AWB was good, the "gunshow loophole" was somehow related to Newtown and Columbine." and the only thing holding up those "good" things is the NRA.

The story of the 1977 "revolution" is faithfully told and accurate. They Do, credit to them, say again and again that the NRA's power is voters. -Again, accurate.

What they fail to mention in any detail at all is any counter to their initial premise.

This smacks of ignorance more than deliberate mis-information. Reporters who "know" that "everyone knows that more gun laws stop violence" don't even think of getting an alternative view.

NRA made a BIG mistake not going on record on this. Frontline has a fairly good reputation. That was a mistake, and I think had a lot to do with how this thing ended up.

 

[bnsaibum]

This smacks of ignorance more than deliberate mis-information. Reporters who "know" that "everyone knows that more gun laws stop violence" don't even think of getting an alternative view.

You give them too much credit, or not enough. I find it more likely that they are being quite cunning in their portrayal of the NRA and they are banking on their gravitas to help sell it. A big, heavy hitting and serious program going for the soft blow might give it more weight in a fence sitters eyes. In the end your first statement is more to the point...

It's a slick piece of propaganda in that it doesn't so much lie or distort, it just entirely omits any other POV.

 

[soberups]

The part that got to me was how all the parents of the Sandy Hook victims felt "betrayed" by the NRA and the U.S. Senate for failing to pass background check legislation in the aftermath of the massacre.

Completely omitted from the narrative.... is the simple fact that such legislation would not have prevented the tragedy in the first place.

Adam Lanza'a mother passed a Brady background check when she purchased the weapons that her son used to commit the murders. For that matter, Lanza himself had no criminal record and would therefore have been allowed to buy the weapons on his own had he not chosen to steal them instead.

Here is an idea; Adam Lanza wore white socks when he committed the murders, so lets ban white socks. Why not? The color of his socks was as relevant to the outcome of the massacre as the lack of a Federal requirement for background checks on private sales.

 

[MrNatural]

This smacks of ignorance more than deliberate mis-information.

Crappola. Network tv episodes that cost a couple million $ each and months of production time to make are NOT tossed together like a youtube vid. These propagandists are PROFESSIONALS, with backing from the highest levels at PBS and know EXACTLY what they are doing and what their goal is.

They are not misguided. They are cheats.

Frontline has a fairly good reputation.

"A fairly good reputation" like CNN or MSNBC you mean? Ask any thinking conservative their view of Frontline or PBS programming in general and you'll get quite an earful about biased "reporting" and blatant advocacy journalism.

I suspect the problem is that GUNGUY45 is an honest and upright man and so projects his honesty upon the motives of others. Be careful GUNGUY45 - this is how good people get swindled.

FRONTLINE AND PBS ARE NOT SIMPLY MISGUIDED. THEY ARE NOT JUST LAZY. THEY ARE SCHEMING, UNDERHANDED AGENDA-DRIVEN CHEATS!

 

[MrNatural]

Another thing I noticed upon re-watching the piece - notice the MUSIC.

The use of music in vids is so pervasive today that we usually don't even notice that its there in the background.

But notice how its used in Frontline's video . . .

Creepy music is played when showing pictures of guns.

Bright happy music is played when they talk about the "old NRA" before it became the evil political NRA of today.

Sad music is played toward the end when the gun-control vote is shown failing.

Does the music add to the facts presented? NO. THE MUSIC MANIPULATES THE EMOTIONAL PRESENTATION OF THE NARRATIVE. Embedding it at a subconscious level.

More proof the show is meticulously crafted to create an EMOTIONAL PREJUDICE and not to inform the audience.

Propaganda. Pure, skillfully-produced propaganda engineered to create factless fanatics for the antigun cause.

We are not debating others who simply hold differing views. We are fighting the pick of evil's legions who will be satisfied with nothing less than our eradication.

Don't be distracted or deceived by the middle-aged female "useful idiots" waving signs in the street and chanting about children. THEY AREN'T THE ONES DRIVING THE ANTIGUN AGENDA - they are just the window-dressing. Keep your eye on the puppeteers!

"The Left do not want gun control because they fear gun violence. They want to disarm us because they hate us." - Col. Jeff Cooper

 

[Gunguy45]

Crappola. Network tv episodes that cost a couple million $ each and months of production time to make are NOT tossed together like a youtube vid. These propagandists are PROFESSIONALS, with backing from the highest levels at PBS and know EXACTLY what they are doing and what their goal is.

Well, I've actually worked in a newsroom and known a lot of reporters, producers and editors. And my experience is that "What everyone knows" is a lot more likely culprit than a deliberate attempt to present what they know to be false.

They do not know the alternative arguments. Those arguments never even OCCUR to them. And without the participation of the NRA (again, a mistake and a big one here) those arguments are never made to the reporters and producers.

There are lots of complaints I have about this piece, obviously. As ALWAYS with the media and guns, there is a level of journalistic malpractice which wouldn't be tolerated for a second on most subjects.

But no, I'm not buying into the "vast left-wing conspiracy" theory. Most bad journalism can be attributed pretty easily to laziness, ignorance and tone-deafness. Are journalists generally well to the left of my politics? Yes. There are a lot of factors that go into that, but the prime one in my experience is urbanized backgrounds and a very small circle of people that shape the JOURNALISTS opinions. the better of them try not to inject their opinions into their work. But that's becoming more and more rare all the time as people of my generation, who were trained to NEVER let our opinions show in our articles die off, retire, etc.

These days it's all about revenue, shock value, etc. And yes, Frontline in particular has a quite good reputation as being pretty fair. But in this case, they got no cooperation from the one group that WOULD have given them a very different narrative. The NRA's absence in the piece is glaring, and did far more harm than any editing Frontline was likely to do.

When the subject of a piece of investigative journalism refuses to talk to you, you're in a pretty weak place to represent their position. Particularly true when the underlying narrative seems so "obvious" to many reporters who know less than nothing about the subject prior to getting assigned the piece and who already have strong personal biases in one direction.

New York didn't get the "Safe Act" because of a left-wing coup. It got it with the willing participation of a bunch of urbanites who know nothing about guns, the issues or anything else. As you said, it's about emotion, not facts.

Falling into the trap of Hillary Clinton calling out some "vast conspiracy" isn't going to help us. It just tends to make us more insular and less willing to have conversations with people who disagree with us.