CBS anti gun news shows

News Release — August 3, 1999

CBS Commits Fraud Against Americans and Constitution

NRA urges citizens to call and give CBS a “Reality Check”

on individual right of law-abiding Americans to own firearms.

(WASHINGTON) — Immediately after last night’s airing of CBS Evening News’ blatantly biased “Reality Check” segment, which ignored recent scholarly research and falsely claimed that the Second Amendment is not an individual right, the National Rifle Association launched a campaign to provide CBS News with its own reality check.

“Clearly, the reality of CBS is not in step with the reality of the view of the vast majority of law-abiding Americans, nor in line with the view of most constitutional scholars. The national media elite at CBS wouldn’t know reality if it stepped in front of Dan Rather’s limousine,” said James J. Baker, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. “This alleged news network completely ignored a mountain of recent research from constitutional scholars who agree that the Second Amendment refers to an individual right, just as the entire Bill of Rights refers to individual rights.”

Baker said he was urging NRA members and concerned citizens to call CBS News and local CBS affiliates to express their outrage that last night’s so-called “news” report would ignore the bulk of recent scholarly research. “Every American, every journalist, who values truth, accuracy and balanced reporting should call and express their outrage at CBS’ effort to disguise their editorial bias as news,” Baker said. “It is little wonder that their ratings continue to diminish.”

Baker noted several key failures on the part of CBS:

** CBS FAILED to cite the 1990 Supreme Court reference to the Second Amendment in U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez that stated, “`the people’ protected by the Fourth Amendment, and by the First and Second Amendments … refers to a class of persons who are part of the national community.” Each of these rights are individual.

** CBS FAILED to report this year’s federal court ruling from the Northern District of Texas, U.S. v. Emerson, in which the federal judge overturned a federal gun law on Second Amendment grounds and argued, “The rights of the Second Amendment should be as zealously guarded as the other individual liberties enshrined in the bill of rights.”

** CBS FAILED to report that, in the last decade, scholars from across the political spectrum have concluded that the Second Amendment, from any method of analysis, protects an individual right, and that this view is now commonly referred to as the “Standard Model” (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, 1995).

** CBS FAILED to note that the nation’s leading constitutional scholars such as Lawrence Tribe (Harvard), Akil Reed Amar (Yale), William Van Alstyne (Duke), and Sanford Levinson (Texas) ascribe to the concept of the individual Second Amendment right as the “Standard Model.”

** CBS FAILED to report the conclusion of Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, of the University of Tennessee, that scholars adhering to an individual rights interpretation, “… dominate the academic literature on the Second Amendment almost completely,” and that this view is “… the mainstream scholarly interpretation.”

“The bottom line is that CBS failed as a news organization last night,” Baker said. “They even completely ignored statements by a Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, in clear and full support the Second Amendment as an individual right and in anticipation of ruling on a future case to that effect.”

Baker said the NRA, the nation’s oldest grassroots civil rights organization, would continue its work to preserve the Second Amendment, and the entire Bill of Rights, for future generations. “The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, and the NRA were here long before CBS was founded and, I suspect, will remain long after they’re gone,” Baker said. “And that bodes well for future generations of freedom-loving Americans.”