The Centrism Journalism Critique Thread For 12/17/12: David Gregory Indirectly Did The NRA's Press Sec's Job

David Gregory assumed something as a general fact again without doing his homework, again.

Gregory's suggestion that "we've seen declining support since 1990 for stricter gun control measures" relies on flawed polling data that only asks generic questions about public support for restrictions on firearms. When the public is asked about specific gun violence prevention proposals, large majorities support enacting some further restrictions. An August 9 CNN poll found that 96 percent of Americans support requiring a background check for every gun purchase. 

The same poll found that nearly three-in-five respondents favored banning semi-automatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines containing more than 10 bullets, like those used in the July 20 mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. The CNN poll also found that 76 percent of Americans favored requiring individuals to register their weapons with local law enforcement and 91 percent favored preventing felons and people with mental health problems from owning guns.

Once again, lazy journalism that David Gregory fully believes is the exact truth. When you keep on regurgitating information that is not true but is powerfully assumed as truth in the Beltway centrist big media world, things like this happen and the public is fundamentally misinformed in large numbers for generations.

It's another incomplete or factually just inaccurate statement by Gregory throughout his career (and especially as Meet The Press host), as many have made in the centrist, corporate, huge media world in America.

And the even sadder thing about it is, he may take MORE offense at being inadequate at his high level job once more instead of understanding that he is not some elite journalist, just like the rest of his high level colleagues.

This was not even a complex correction he had to assert with some diligent research for goodness sake. It wasn't about TARP or sequestration matters with the budget. It was simple poll numbers that Gregory didn't even bother to research. Instead, he choose to do the thing he does better than all of his centrist, smug, lazy political news colleagues: Assume something is a definitive fact instead of actually doing the work required to see if it is.

That's David Gregory for you, current king of Centrist journalism media in the Beltway and Manhattan.

Centrist political journalism media in America, where going all the way and getting the exact truth and having courage to say and know the full truth is taboo. Because doing the best journalism possible is completely taboo.