CNN reporter John Zarella seems to have out-and-out faked a demonstration of an automatic weapon as well as made a gross error/lie about the “assault” gun ban. And yet, no heads are rolling at CNN. Why?
First, Zarella made an error that gun control advocates encourage but that anyone doing reporting on the “assault” weapons ban should know not to make (or else find a different line of work). Zarella featured automatic and semiautomatic weapons in a report on the ban, and claimed that the ban outlawed automatic weapons. In fact, it did no such thing. All the ban did was make it illegal to sell semiautomatic rifles that feature certain external attachments such as flash suppressors, large magazines, etc. (the actual law sets out a complicated test to determine whether or not a given gun is legal or not and I won’t go into that here).
Second, Zarella featured a police officer oing a live demonstration of firing a weapon on semiautomatic and a weapon on automatic fire at a brick. Here’s how The Washington Times describes (emphasis added),
In the first of the two segments that aired Thursday, a Broward County detective fired the AK-47 in semiautomatic mode, and the camera showed bullets hitting a cinder-block target. The detective then fired a legal semiautomatic weapon, and CNN showed a cinder-block target with no apparent damage. On Friday, CNN admitted that the detective had not been firing at the cinder block.
Given the problems we’ve seen with credibility problems at major national newspapers, I don’t see where Zarella avoids the chopping block for deceiving viewers.
Source:
CNN rapped over gun segment. Robert Stacy McCain, The Washington Times, May 19, 2003.