Instalanche!!!! And I didn’t even have to beg for it 
Welcome, look around. This is my new home here on Wordpress (thanks to the help and hosting of the lovely, kind, and sassy Bitter Bitch). Mostly gun stuff, but I’ve been blogging youtube vids of my favorite hippy jam bands recently.
We all know that the tasks of drafting a story for a paper and drafting the headline are assigned to two different people.
But who knew that the responsibility for drafting the short story summary on a major news papers web page was also done by someone who didn’t read the article??
Well, apparently it is.
Here’s the Washington Post web page from a few minutes ago.
Va. governor says confusion over privacy laws, weak gun regulations and inadequate mental health system funding contributed to shootings.
Since I suspect this will change, here’s a picture of the web page.
Thats a pretty amazing statement considering all we know. It was weak gun regulations that were most responsible for Virginia Tech, not idiotic policies at Virginia Tech, a broken down mental health system, or even - perhaps - a deranged student who was known to authorities far and wide. Surely this can’t be the case??
And indeed its not. In fact, the piece by Amy Gardner, Sari Horwitz and Tim Craig doesn’t mention weak gun regulations a single time. How’s that for some editorial bias??
Kaine was quick to applaud the Virginia Tech Police Department for its response to the mass shootings at Norris Hall, where Cho, 23, gunned down 30 of his 32 victims before killing himself. He also echoed the report’s conclusion that Cho’s family and the Fairfax County Public Schools intervened commendably during Cho’s early years to provide treatment, support and a stable environment in which the former Centreville resident could succeed.
But, the governor added, “none of that information” ever got to Virginia Tech — partly explaining how Cho fell through the cracks upon arriving at the large university. Kaine blamed overly cautious interpretations of privacy laws and inadequate follow-up by university officials and the state’s mental health system once Cho’s troubling behavior surfaced at Tech.
The article goes on to discuss the concerns of parents that the report doesn’t explain in enough detail how Cho got through the cracks - or assign blame - and their annoyance that it lets the university off for its failure to alert the campus and shut down the school after the initial murders were discovered. It quotes (at length) the University President who stopped short of embracing it and indicated he would push for reform of privacy laws. But again, it doesn’t mention anything about the need for more gun control.
To be fair, the report does state the following:
7. Cho purchased two guns in violation of federal law. The fact that in 2005 Cho had been judged to be a danger to himself and ordered to outpatient treatment made him ineligible to purchase a gun under federal law.
8. Virginia is one of only 22 states that report any information about mental health to a federal database used to conduct background checks on would-be gun purchasers. But Virginia law did not clearly require that persons such as Cho—who had been ordered into out-patient treatment but not committed to an institution—be reported to the database. Governor Kaine’s executive order to report all persons involuntarily committed for outpatient treatment has temporarily addressed this ambiguity in state law. But a change is needed in the Code of Virginia as well.
9. Some Virginia colleges and universities are uncertain about what they are permitted to do regarding the possession of firearms on campus.
But, 1) thats not what the governor said and 2) thats a long way from blaming allegedly weak gun laws in Virginia (in fact, it sure makes it sound like Virginia has more strict laws in this sense than most other states).
But, we shouldn’t be too surprised, this is the Washington Post after all.
I just emailed the following comment to the authors:
Looks like the lead paragraph on the Post’s web page - highlighting the primary responsibility of Virginia’s allegedly weak gun laws in the Virgina Tech massacre - didn’t read your otherwise excellent story that didn’t discuss gun laws at all.
This is a big, big problem at the Post. Tragically, while the Post has some fantastic writers (even if I disagree with them at times) its obscene and baseless editorial biases undermine the credibility of nearly everyone associated with the paper.
I’d raise holy hell if I were you.
UPDATE
Well, that was quick. 10 minutes after sending my email, its fixed. Good to know they listen to their readers, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the Post’s reflexive anti gun bias tearing away at the credibility of all its hard working employees.
