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Thursday, December 27, 2012

NBC, CBS Report Outrage Over NY Paper's Gun Map

Both NBC and CBS covered the outrage Thursday morning over a New York newspaper publishing the names and addresses of gun permit holders in two counties. ABC made no mention of the controversy, however.

"A suburban New York City newspaper is in the middle of a big controversy this morning after it put up online the names and addresses of everyone with a gun permit," reported CBS This Morning co-host Jeff Glor. "Call it a battle between the First and Second Amendments," said NBC News correspondent Katy Tur on the Today show.

Both the Today show and CBS This Morning aired full segments on the controversy. CBS even interviewed a Syracuse University journalism professor and a former NYPD deputy commissioner about the story, and both frowned upon the paper's decision to publish the details.

"In this case, I think that the newspaper has gone a little bit too far in terms of publishing information that actually stigmatizes people," Syracuse professor Hub Brown told CBS. "I think it's a bit disingenuous of the Journal News to say that they were just giving information out here. They were taking a position on guns."

Former NYPD Commissioner John Miller offered the law enforcement perspective. "Well the police chiefs look at this and say, look, 40 percent of the people who are holding these gun permits are either active or retired law enforcement. And these are people who have put people in jail for a long time, these are people who could be targets," he said.

The Journal News riled gun owners and bloggers with its story, which prompted a backlash that climaxed with a blogger publishing the personal information of the paper's reporters and editors. (Continues)

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