BY WILLIAM FREIVOGEL / The Missouri Senate fell one vote short of overriding Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of a bill that would have made it a crime to print the name of a person who owned a gun. The bill also would have made it a crime for Missouri law enforcement officials to enforce federal gun laws thought to violate the Second Amendment.
BY WILLIAM FREIVOGEL / The Missouri Legislature may override a veto next week and enact the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” a bill that virtually reads the First Amendment out of the Constitution. The law makes it a crime to publish a story identifying a person as a gun-owner. The First Amendment isn’t the only part of the Constitution that the bill would ignore. In a throwback to the doctrine of “Nullification” that paved the way for the Civil War, HB 436 would nullify federal gun laws going back to 1934.
BY WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL / Thirty years ago, this reporter was covering the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington. To prepare, a check was made of the bound volumes of the stories written on the day of the march by the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. It turned out that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not mentioned until about 40 inches into the story. Recently, Robert Kaiser, former managing editor of the Washington Post recalled his experience covering the march as a young reporter. He noted that the Post also barely mentioned King’s dream speech.
BY WILLIAM H. FREIVOGEL / The national dust storm kicked up by the “Obama” clown in a bull ring at the Missouri State Fair is the latest illustration of the way a small local controversy about race can quickly turn into a national one with the help of video, social media, traditional media and radio talk shows.Jo Mannies, Missouri’s premier political reporter at the St. Louis Beacon, traced the way the controversy in Sedalia last weekend quickly reached Washington and beyond.
The press doesn’t cover nuance very well, especially when it is covering itself – or when a reporter is more of an advocate than an impartial observer. The recent NSA stories and those about leaks of top-secret information are good examples. Both are important stories raising serious questions about the right balance between liberty and security. But the failure to provide nuanced, balanced information has left Americans with a distorted idea of what is at stake.