An Excoriating Fact-Check of CNN’s Piers Morgan
and His Anti-Gun Claims
and His Anti-Gun Claims
Billy Hallowell, TheBlaze — Ben Swann, a local Fox anchor for WXIX-TV in Cincinnati, recently delivered an excoriating fact-check of CNN’s Piers Morgan and his anti-gun claims. Since the tragedy at Sandy Hook, many media outlets have essentially remained silent, while taking gun control advocates’ talking points at face value.However, Swann has embraced a very different approach. Last Wednesday, he delved deeply into the debate, intensely fact-checking — in an on-air bit — many of the statistics and statements that the CNN host has most-recently spouted. The segment quickly went viral, raising eyebrows and interest across the blogosphere. On Monday, the local journalist spoke with TheBlaze in detail about the segment.
For Swann, 34, this is nothing new. The journalist regularly does fact checks on statements and scenarios surrounding prominent national issues through WXIX’s “Reality Check” segment (an undertaking that the anchor writes, produces and hosts). While his Morgan followed the same mold in terms of on-air practices at the station, it has gained the most national attention when compared to past clips.
“The segment that we do called ‘Reality Check’ — we do this three times per week,” he told TheBlaze. “We take things that are going on in the media…and we look to eliminate the bias and opinion out of them. We focus specifically on the facts of the story.”
When it comes to Morgan’s most recent on-air statements about firearms and gun violence, Swann said that he noticed that the CNN host had been “making a lot of statements that are not quite right.” So, he set out to examine the facts, which led to the now-infamous, viral fact-check.
[...] In the original segment, while exploring the United Kingdom’s numbers (Great Britain is part of the UK), Swann noted that the UK has the second-highest overall crime rate in the European Union (EU); the EU has also named Britain the most violent country in the union.“In the UK, there are 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people,” Swann said in the original clip, showcasing that fewer guns is certainly not indicative of a lower crime rate (the rate in the U.S. is 466 per 100,000 residents).
Even in re-approaching these numbers, the anchor claims that the U.S. still comes out with a more favorable rate. He will release his clarified results during one of this week’s “Reality Checks.”
“There’s a disingenuous argument when you say this is about assault rifles,” Swann said of the overarching debate. “For us, it’s really an issue of getting into factual numbers so we can have an honest debate.” » Read More
Related: » Alex Jones vs Piers Morgan On Gun Control (Full Interview)
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About the Author
Billy Hallowell has been working in journalism and media for more than a decade. His writings have appeared in Human Events, Mediaite and on FOXNews.com, among other outlets. Hallowell has a B.A. in journalism and broadcasting from the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York and an M.S. in social research from Hunter College in Manhattan, New York. He is the founder of Pathufind Media and lives just outside NYC with his wife. You can find him on Twitter @BillyHallowell.
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