-By Warner Todd Huston
Reuters highlights a great little tale filled with anti-gun bias and bad reporting, all topped with an extremely misleading photo that presents a wonderful example of biased “reporting” at its worst. The story is about a German man who was “crowded out of his home” by his gun collection but the photo is of a gun store display in America. What the two have to do with each other is anybody’s guess. But then we find out the man wasn’t crowded out by his gun collection after all. Just a little thought put to the Reuters tale reveals that the whole thing is bunk.
As this Reuters fairy tale begins we find that a man in Berlin, Germany “ran out of space” in his home because his gun collection was so large.
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German man was such an avid collector of weapons and other paraphernalia that he ran out of space at home and had to sleep in a hotel, neighbors said following the 71-year-old’s death… Executors found an arsenal of weaponry and assorted goods at the man’s two-story home in the western city of Aachen…
Wow, it must have been hundreds and hundreds of guns that caused this man to flee from his two-story home to a hotel, right?
Well, not really.
Turns out he only had 71 guns. That would hardly fill up a two-story house!
“There were 71 guns — one for each year of his life,” said police spokesman Paul Kemen. “He also had 41 cases of ammunition and five walking sticks fitted with retractable blades.”
Wait a minute. 71 guns filled up his whole two-story house? Now, it isn’t until the fourth paragraph that we find out it wasn’t all those guns that forced him out of his home. Apparently the man was a pack rat and “collected everything.”
Heiner Hautermans, a reporter at the Aachener Nachrichten paper, said neighbors related how the man, who lived alone, collected everything from clothing to garden tools and watches.
“The house was stuffed to the rafters,” he said. “By the end, the neighbors said he had to sleep in a hotel sometimes because there was no more room.”
So, why did Reuters have to focus on the guns in that first paragraph as an “arsenal” that “crowded him out” of his house? Isn’t the real story far less about the guns and more about the fact that he just had a house stuffed with tons of junk, the 71 guns being but a small part of that collection?
But, wait. Along with the anti-gun bias, Reuters also threw in a misleading picture… at no extra cost to the reader.
The photo is of a gun store display from the United States. So, what does a gun store in the U.S. have to do with a German guy who had a few guns around the house? Even worse, here is the caption on the Reuters photo:
A customer browses for guns at the Cabela’s store in Fort Worth, Texas March 7, 2008.
And there we have it. Undue focus on guns, a misleading story, and an accompanying photo that has absolutely zip to do with the story.
Great job, Reuters!
(h/t Ed Morrissey)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston