By Josh Levy
New Jersey – -(Ammoland.com)- The worst type of political scandal doesn’t involve the passing of money but the manipulation of public information.
The reason for this is plain. Money cannot buy everything in the political world. Many very wealthy or well-connected candidates have failed. Many well-funded legislative efforts have come to nothing. But control over the sources of public information – above all, the schools and the press – brings control over public opinion, which makes any political achievement possible.
As Lincoln said, “[P]ublic sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.” The anti-gun left seems to have absorbed this lesson in New Jersey . . .
An anti-Second Amendment activist with connections to two of the most prominent anti-gun groups in the state – and, through those groups, to state senate majority leader, Loretta Weinberg – has been writing stories for two years for the second-largest New Jersey newspaper about the gun rights debate. His coverage, consistently sympathetic to the anti-2A position, has included stories about the activities of the two anti-gun groups to which he has been personally connected without disclosing his apparent conflict of interest.
It seems that the fervent campaign against the right to keep and bear arms in New Jersey, led by Sen. Weinberg, might have received a big helping hand from a reporter at a widely-distributed newspaper that conveniently failed to inform their readers that he was active, whether formerly or currently, on the side of the anti freedom groups and politicians he covered.
Background
Everyone knows that New Jersey is one of the most hostile states to gun owners. Less known is that the anti-gun owner campaign is largely driven by activists in one northern region: Bergen County. At once the most populous and most leftist area of the state, Bergen County’s politics are closer to those of neighboring Manhattan than the more moderate western or southern counties of New Jersey. (Arguably, Bergen County is the main reason that statewide elections usually swing Democratic.) The county is home to the state senate majority leader, Loretta Weinberg, who has earned a national reputation in recent years for her blind and vitriolic prejudice against gun owners. Weinberg typically wins re-election by a margin of 40-50%.
The county is also home to the Bergen County Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, founded by the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County. The Society is so closely affiliated with the Coalition that the Society boasts of founding the Coalition and filling the Coalition’s officer positions. The Ethical Culture Society still offers support to the Coalition’s activities (just run a search for the two names together and skim the results). The Coalition, the Society, and Sen. Loretta Weinberg are all located in the town of Teaneck.
Apparent Conflict of Interest: BC Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence
What might be unexpected, however, is how Sen. Weinberg and these organizations have benefited from free, fawning coverage by a Bergen Record reporter who was also an organizer of the Bergen County Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence (and has spoken publicly on its behalf), and an active member of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County. Mr. Jim Norman.
Norman, formerly of the New York Times, has written numerous stories for the Bergen Record, the second-largest circulating newspaper in New Jersey, about political events sponsored by the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence or the Ethical Culture Society. He has done so without yet disclosing, it seems, his apparent conflict of interest in the online articles, and with the possible approval of his assignment editor, Mrs. Carla Baranauckas.
Read the complete Article: “Bergen Record Reporter Covers Anti Gun Orgs Without Disclosing His Affiliation With Them” : https://tiny.cc/w7c0rx