MediaWatch: April 1998
Table of Contents:
Jonesboro Ambush: Who's to Blame?
Media blame Southern Gun Culture, Push for Gun Control
Two children aged 11 and 13 gunned down their classmates and a teacher in a tragic shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas on March 24. The media’s reaction? Disparage the residents of the town by insulting their Southern heritage and trampling on their right to bear arms.
ABC’s Rebecca Chase linked Jonesboro with other school shootings on the March 25 World News Tonight: "Jonesboro, Arkansas. West Paducah, Kentucky. Pearl, Mississippi. All cases of kids killing kids with guns, all in the South, all in states with fewer gun control laws. In Arkansas, a child of any age can have a rifle or shotgun. While easy accessibility is a nationwide problem, in the South there are simply more guns available." Though the story matched the liberal agenda to enact gun control laws, Chase did give time to the other side, delivering their arguments on the benefits of children learning to use a rifle safely.
Most network coverage went straight for the jugular of Southern culture. On the March 25 Today, Katie Couric asked Ronald Stephens of the National School Boards Safety Center: "I read you something before this interview about experts saying that Southern culture may be a factor because these incidents that have been so high profile have happened in southern rural towns because they say there is more access to guns. It’s a climate of people feeling strong about the right to bear arms. They are introduced to guns early on. Do you think there is any, any credibility in that assessment?"
Couric continued the next day, badgering Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee: "This is a third deadly shooting to take place in the South in the last five months, and some criminal experts have ventured a guess that southern society, which has a more permissive attitude towards guns and hunting, and perhaps in some circles even glamorizes those things that might have been a factor in some, this recent spate of shootings. What’s your view of that?" Huckabee replied: "Colin Ferguson got on a train in Long Island, shot 39 people. That wasn’t Long Island, Arkansas."
On CNN’s Inside Politics on March 25, anchor Bernard Shaw pushed anti-gun Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.): "Should there be a federal law that convicts adults whose guns fall into the hands of the children you’re referring to?"
Shaw later pleaded with CNN analyst William Schneider "In our country, if the majority rules, why is it so hard to get gun laws passed?...So how do you get gun control laws passed, given what you’ve just said?"
