The National Rifle Association has been moonlighting in gun-friendly, anti-media propaganda with its NRATV brand since 2016, but recent videos show they are upping the ante as increasingly common and increasingly deadly mass shootings have led to calls for greater gun control.
A recent video shows NRATV host Colion Noir playing his part in villainizing the media, which he claims counts on mass shootings for ratings and to push an agenda. Literally no one benefits more from mass shootings than the media, he says, “because tragedy is their business model.”
This response to the Feb. 14 high school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead is part of NRA’s ongoing strategy to dismiss journalists committed to reporting reality. Although less so with Noir’s video, some of the clips veer out of mere criticism to take on a threatening tone, despite the palatable irony of choosing to support one Constitutional Amendment over another.
In his video, Noir claims that the mainstream media covers gun violence selectively, altogether ignoring Chicago gun violence and incidents where someone with a gun stops a crime from occurring. With mass shootings, the media sensationalizes the shooters, inspiring others to commit similar crimes, “and the higher the body count, the more the coverage.”
The NRA expects its audience to buy that mass shootings lack newsworthiness and that the prevention of a single crime thanks to guns is on par with the death of 17 people, including 14 teenagers who didn’t die defending this country, but simply going to school.
This approach by the NRA draws from the far right’s current anti-media sentiment as the powerful lobbying organization, which was once apolitical, drifts ever-further to the radical side of the political spectrum.
I grew up in a family that supported the NRA, so I remember seeing their material on our kitchen table. That’s why I was dumbfounded last week when I discovered NRATV and its creepy, menacing aversion to the First Amendment, a far cry from the magazines and pamphlets I remember growing up with unless my parents were hiding the good stuff.
In one video, an NRATV host wearing a shirt that reads “Socialist Tears” uses a mallet to strike a TV flashing images of CNN, NBC and other news organizations – and inexplicably John Oliver and Alec Baldwin imitating President Donald Trump, neither of whom are journalists. The host, Grant Stinchfield, then stares at the camera, continuing to hold his mallet, presumably keeping it at the ready to smash some more stuff. The screen cuts to NRATV’s logo and a message reading, “Our greatest weapon is truth.”
A trailer for yet another NRATV propaganda program takes it a step further. In a script that holds remarkable similarities to the trailer for conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich’s upcoming movie about the evils of journalism, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch makes it clear that the end is nigh for the media.
“To those who stain honest reporting with partisanship, to those who bring bias and propaganda to CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times, your time is running out,” Loesch said. “The clock starts now.”
While it isn’t a new development for the NRA to challenge news reports it perceives as a threat to gun ownership, the timing and message seem particularly dangerous. The NRA is taking advantage of a group of people who already are inclined to disregard reality in favor of misleading and often incorrect information disguised as news. The NRA is helping disperse the message of those organizations, which play a greater role in spreading propaganda than in informing Americans. The NRA also inadvertently and perhaps knowingly is pushing away traditional conservatives, moderates and liberals who support gun ownership, which I expect, perhaps due to my own naivety, will eventually backfire.
With these videos, the NRA has made it clear that it doesn’t view the First Amendment as being on equal footing with the Second. And while employing misdirection, the insultingly false claim that the organization is looking out for everyday Americans, they’re content to have us think that whatever position they take is what’s best for us.
The NRA wants us to believe that it’s wrong and offensive to gun owners to take any action whatsoever to prevent the massacres that have become normalized over the last six years. I ask that you remember: Those who seek to disparage the free press have ulterior motives. When lives are at stake, we should acknowledge the nature of those motives.
Contact Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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