"MSM" means "Main Stream Media," also sometimes called the "Legacy Media." The "blitz" refers to both A) the more or less constantly negative attitude and misreporting in the press about firearms; and B) the recently increased negativity and editorializing in the media with regard to firearms in the wake of the recent spate of mass shootings. I'm not going to do all of your research for you, but if you go to the websites of CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, & CNN and search on the words "gun" or "firearm," you will find the editorial slant embedded in the articles to be universally negative. Here, LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU. The top article in that Google search is a Reason Magazine article from 2000, titled "Loaded Coverage: How the news media miss the mark on the gun issue." The MSM NEVER report on firearms issues either neutrally or accurately - let alone favorably.Skeptilius wrote:I'm not naive or complacent. What does MSM mean and where is this anti-gun blitz? I want to learn more about it. I'm not hard headed either. If evidence warrants it I can change my mind. Educate me.
The one lone exception of an MSM outlet that does cover firearms with a more or less neutral voice is Fox News. Fair and balanced. . . mostly. . .but even they get it wrong once in a while. No, Fox is not perfect. They have a tendency to linger on and on over stories that don't really matter that much from a national news perspective (Laci Peterson's murder, Drew Peterson [a different story] killing his wife, Natalie Holloway's disappearance, etc.) and they have too much of an emphasis on babe-alicious reporters with lots of lip gloss for my tastes; but they also have by far the largest market share of all news networks for a reason - the viewing audience for the most part identifies with them on a social and political level.
If you do a demographic survey of the target audiences for each of the major news networks, you will find that their social and political values tend to be represented by the editorial slant of whatever their favorite news outlet is. The demographics of the MSM - Fox News excepted - tend from the centrist toward the liberal, while Fox tends from the centrist to the conservative. Since Fox is the lone "conservative" news outlet, and since right of center Americans make up roughly half of the news watching audience, that is why Fox has such a large market share compared to the other networks. (And no offense intended to any member of this board, but those folks who get most or all of their "news" coverage from MSNBC tend to be the nutroots of the left - hence the continued employment of paranoid delusional boneheads like Keith Olberman.) Since Fox is the lone MSM voice of conservatism and all the other MSM outlets are liberal, it is easy for the left to assume that conservative thought represents a small minority of the nation. They simply ignore the inconvenient fact that Fox has the largest market share (and growing) of all the major news networks.
Having come from the newspaper industry myself, I can tell you that reporting in the nation's major newspapers is even more slanted to the left (and hence, even more anti-gun) than the broadcast/cable media. Major newspapers across the nation have almost universally suffered dramatic declines in their readership - and hence the advertising rates they may command, which are based on readership. They are hurting. The reason is two-fold. One is that the Internet is a source of free news - often from the same publishers - to anyone with a computer and a connection. The other is that, in their strident leftist agendae, major newspapers have driven people away from subscribing. An easy example is the New York Times, whose readership has declined so rapidly that they are facing having to sell their building and lay people off. They blame it on the Internet. More dispassionate sources blame it on their overt attempts to influence elections and a willingness to disclose top secret information bordering on the treasonous. That, and for being unapologetic shills for every misbegotten liberal idea that ever came down the pike. Even back in the 1920s, they were reporting favorably on Soviet food production - hook line and sinker - during which time there was actually a famine in progress which killed people in the hundreds of thousands.
Those are but a few reasons for why there is a growing disdain for the MSM. That is why the hard left (which includes Obama) are so threatened by talk radio that they want it suppressed by means of a "Fairness Doctrine" (a doublespeak term of which Orwell would have been truly proud). Talk radio is the one medium in which conservative ideas - read that PRO-GUN ideas - have prevailed, and the one medium in which attempts to launch liberal talk shows have been largely unsuccessful at the national level. In fact, that is why the MSM is often called the "Legacy Media;" because they can't start anything new which will survive, and they have to depend on what outlets they had before they slipped so far to the left that they lost the middle ground to newer networks like Fox, to talk radio, and to the blogosphere.