This morning I read this article at Factcheck.org:
There’s no dispute that thousands of handguns, military style rifles and other firearms are purchased in the U.S. and end up in the hands of Mexican criminals each year. It’s relatively easy to buy such guns legally in Texas and other border states and to smuggle them across.
But is it true as President Obama said, that “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States?” No, it’s not.
Then, on my Blackberry, I read this in the LA Times opinion section:
Imagine, for a moment, that a drug war in the United States had claimed 10,000 American lives in a little more than two years, and that about 90% of the 16,000 military-style assault weapons captured from traffickers here were traced to gun dealers in Mexico. What would the reaction of the U.S. government be? And how would we respond if the president of Mexico, having campaigned on a platform to reinstate a ban on assault weapons, acknowledged that it would be too politically difficult to take on the gun enthusiasts?
I meant to blog something about it, but the LA Times bloggers beat me to it (talking about Obama’s assertion):
On his recently concluded first visit to Mexico as president, a week after telling Europeans that his country had been at times arrogant, President Barack Obama blamed his own country for providing 90% of Mexico’s recovered crime guns.
According to a report by the independent FactCheck.org this afternoon, that’s incorrect. By a, uh, long shot.
The president’s assertion, also cited by Mexican President Felipe Calderon during their joint news conference in Mexico City, and the reported inaccuracy seems likely to fuel the eternal American gun-control debate, especially as it relates to the U.S. role in Mexico’s deadly drug world.
Now on one hand, none of the many layers of editors managing LA Times quality knows how to use Google. On the other, someone at the LA Times does, but doesn’t read their own editorial pages.
I see some room for improvement here…
And as a sidenote, it would be really interesting someday to see some ‘nuance’ in the LA Times (or NY Times for that matter) positions on firearms…
–
FactCheck.org did a very good research job – the kind of job we should expect from major media. And almost never get.
In this case, Fox News was the only group that even tried to dig and get a real figure. Their mistake makes me glad for FactCheck’s work, but to me it’s far more dispiriting that the NYT and LA Times never even tried.
The difference is directly traceable to each outlet’s political coverage, which is why newsrooms that turn themselves into ideological straightjackets deserve to go out of business. A more diverse staff will question and dig in all key debates, leading to a noticeable quality increase.
Being able to find Google.com certainly wouldn’t hurt, either.
At what pointed does repeating a publicly debunked story become flat out lying?
So, is Obama simply a pawn of the 90% purveyors (there are better words) or an active participant?
These are questions a real liberal should ask.
It seems the Pulitzer Committee understands the problem.
The Fact Check article is a shallow effort for an organization which is supposed to be a fact checker.
And you, Armed Liberal, included your own effort at misinformation as you quoted the Factcheck document. You missed out the bit just after what you quoted.
“here’s no dispute that thousands of handguns, military-style rifles and other firearms are purchased in the U.S. and end up in the hands of Mexican criminals each year. It’s relatively easy to buy such guns legally in Texas and other border states and to smuggle them across.”
Factcheck linked the legal sale of weapons to the illegal smuggling of weapons. I have seen nothing to link either of these events.