Missing Gun story changes by newspaper

Example of the Misleading Press:

On Monday, October 30, 2006, about a week before the national election and as early voters in Florida were starting to cast ballots our local newspaper, the liberal Daytona Beach News-Journal ran the following page 1 headline in large bold letters.

GONE: GUNS U.S. gave Iraq

COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS

Nearly one of every 25 weapons the military bought for Iraq security forces is missing….

Comment: We believe most readers check the headlines and do not read the whole article. Buried on page 11 is that fact the number missing is 4% of the total.

The last paragraph explains that the military inventory includes weapons donated, captured or bought with other funds and not all serial numbers can be registered because some of the weapons are “foreign owned”.

We are left wondering if the weapons that cannot be registered or were captured or donated are the 4% that are missing and what significance that might have.

The Houston Chronicle ran the same article with the headline:
Audit finds many missing U.S. Weapons in Iraq
This article is credited to John Heilprin of the Associated Press and probably indicates the wording of the original article sent by AP (and changed by the News-Journal above.)
The third paragraph quickly indicates the total is only 4% and does not imply that many or all are missing as in the News-Journal headline.
The article ends with general encouragement to improve tracking of materials sent for military, medical professionals and mechanics.
It sounds like an audit was ordered by the government because of items missing (we have seen reports of black market dealings) and an effort is being made by the military to determine why that is happening.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/front/4295769

Newsday.com also carried the article. The headline was:
Weapons for Iraq Missing
Pentagon can’t account for nearly 4% of arms it began giving security forces in 2003, audit finds.
Newsday.com Weapons for Iraq missing

The issue here is that the poor accounting for weapons is not a good thing, it must be corrected and that process has already started. But the lesson is that a couple of words in a headline can alter the perception of the public and helped to shape their thinking. The power of the press is awesome.
A poll held in the Daytona Area would be influenced by this headline. The poll results between Daytona and Houston could be very different because of a subtle change in a story.
We need to alert each other not to be misleading by headlines and a press with an agenda.


Influencing the public perception and then doing a poll to build the shift in perception is fraudulent and not what the 2nd amendment had intended.

Fortunately, the public is smarter and is seeking news elsewhere such as on the internet. Newspapers are losing readership and influence and if they are to flourish they must do what is expected of the press and follow the standards set down years ago by the press editors association.

After reading the Times story I did not have the feeling the Times, in this story, was trying to capitalize on the incident. Maybe I was wrong or maybe I did not find the original story.

I have the feeling there are some in our intelligence community who wish to sandbag our Republican administration. We have seen evidence of this before, we know they were not happy with these papers being released and the work involved in their release. There was an indication of complaints prior to this that some needed to be reviewed more carefully. Maybe someone wanted pay back by dumping obviously sensitive information and then tipped off the Times. Speculation? Sure, but it has happened before.

You can Google these stories and you will see what I mean.