Shooting from the lip
Sun Herald, Page: 14. Sunday, 9 August 2009
The recent brouhaha over the NSW Game Council and the NSW Shooters’ Party prompted Naked Eye to dip into A Journalist’s Guide to Firearms and the Shooting Sports, helpfully produced by the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia. It contains advice about how to report firearm-related stories, and gives examples of “poor reporting”. A line which said: “For three days, bodyguards will have permission to use their own weapons to protect Mr Cheney, who arrives in Sydney late today”, is criticised on the basis that “all too often, firearms are referred to throughout the media as weapons ‘. This is a negative word that automatically causes the reader to think of violence and criminals”. Call us old-fashioned, but armed bodyguards do carry weapons, and anyone who would attack a visiting US vice-president is a violent criminal.
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