Fear-Mongering, J-School Style

Better get scared America, because the Tea Partiers are finally arming themselves, and this can only mean trouble!

Or so two hysterical journalists at the Washington Post believe, anyway.

Bottom line: “dozens” (whatever that means) of people attending a rally for support of the Second Amendment showed up with unloaded and properly carried firearms in NoVA; supporters showing up at a similar DC event were completely unarmed.

However, that is hardly news: first amendment supporters show up with signs and megaphones all the time. So in order to generate fear, the story was re-written to amplify the fact firearms were present (and in a much lower, softer voice, clarifications that this was all legitimate and legal and contextually appropriate).

Read the story: it is quite short, but written entirely convinced that this is dangerously crazy behavior. And what does this have to do with the Tea Party? Nothing, so note the comment “[Armed force] might be justified if people face arrest for refusing to buy insurance under the health care reform package recently passed by Congress.” The Czar is bewildered by the leap in logic here.

And this is no glitch: two journalists wrote this, and presumably at least two editors reviewed this before deeming it both important and news worthy. So either something vital got cut out of this story, or there is no genuine news here...just gun-control spin.