-By Warner Todd Huston
The newspaper editor that caused such controversy in 2012 after publishing the names and home addresses of thousands of gun owners in New York has been laid off, according to the Rockland County Times.
Caryn McBride, editor of the Rockland Journal News was laid off by Journal News Publisher and CEO Janet Hasson. Along with McBride, 17 writers and 26 staffers were also let go.
McBride became infamous for OKaying the publication of an interactive map on the paper’s Internet site made up of the names and home addresses of thousands of legal gun owners in New York’s Rockland County. Her paper got the information from the county clerk’s office.
McBride claimed that since the names and addresses of registered gun owners was public information held by the government, then she had a legal right to expose the personal information of thousands of gun owners.
Naturally gun owners raised a hue and cry demanding the map be removed and that their addresses be protected. The paper, however, doubled down initially, saying it would publish thousands of more names.
It wasn’t long before the state of New York started looking to pass laws to stop county clerks from releasing the private information of registered gun owners. Even before that county clerks across the state began to announce that they would not acquiesce to requests of such information made by journalists.
As the controversy roiled, the newspaper hypocritically hired an armed security service because, McBride said, they’d gotten threats.
After that, things got worse. Home invaders and thieves began to use the map to target the homes of gun owners in order to steal from them.
McBride’s paper ended up putting the lives of thousands of gun owners in danger.
The paper eventually relented and took the map down.
In the end, it turned out that the info the paper published was woefully outdated and filled with incorrect information.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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