Stewart Slams Fox, Where It's Never the Right Time to Talk About Gun Violence
After the recent freakout on Fox, with Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Eric Bolling and their ilk all attacking Bob Costas for speaking out about gun violence, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart slammed them pretty hard this Monday evening for their pious proclamations that now is the wrong time to talk about gun violence -- "now" meaning "anytime whatsoever".
Unless of course you're Ted Nugent, or someone trying to make light of the need for gun control. Then it's perfectly alright.
Media Matters has more on that here: For Fox News, It's Never The Right Time To Discuss Gun Violence:
Fox News is helping to lead the right-wing media charge against NBC sportscaster Bob Costas after he brought up the issue of gun violence during halftime of Sunday night's NFL telecast. Fox's heavy-handed move reflects a long pattern of gun advocates trying to make sure a larger media discussion about gun violence in America does not take place.
Sadly, they appear to be succeeding. [...]
As I've noted for years, the mainstream media long ago stopped covering gun violence as a major issue. And even in the wake of horrendous massacres, like in July when a gunman armed himself with a Smith & Wesson M&P15 and shot 70 moviegoers in Aurora, CO., the press has routinely turned a blind eye to the American epidemic. High-profile shootings are mostly covered as a crime issue, not a larger social one.
And even when the topic is covered the press has done a woeful job including crucial context, like the fact that 30,000 people die and 70,000 more are wounded each year from gun violence in this country. Those figures represent eye-opening details that help tell the larger, disturbing story about gun violence in America. But they're ones that rarely get cited by the U.S. news media when covering gun deaths.
That may be why Fox was so quick to slap down Costas: The GOP channel doesn't want any semblance of a media debate about gun violence to take hold. And Fox certainly doesn't want it to take hold in the high-profile forum of a primetime NFL telecast.
Note that the now-is-not-the-time-to-discuss-guns line of attack pushed by Fox has become common practice among conservatives and Republican politicians. Following the Aurora massacres, Sean Hannity and Fox contributor Michelle Malkin were furious the "left wing" was trying to "politicize" the story when they simply made the obvious connection between run-away gun violence and the movie theater mass murder.
