Yellow Journalism At Its Worst

The Mormon Church sells unregulated guns

That was the title on an opinion piece published yesterday afternoon in The Detroit News. The author, Libby Spencer, uses the tagline "separating fact from fiction" and describes herself as a "social media maven whose political commentary has been published on a wide variety of websites". I think a yellow journalist would be a better description.

What she is referring to is the website for KSL-TV and KSL-Radio in Salt Lake City. The stations are owned by the Deseret Media. This company is a for-profit enterprise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints aka the Mormons. On the site, a large and active classified section where individuals are selling everything from cars to livestock and everything in between. Among the categories is firearms. This is just like many newspapers and trading post type newspapers also do on a daily basis. Locally here in the mountains, we have Iwanna which does the exact same thing.

Ms. Spencer doesn't even have the decency to accurately quote the source for her story. That source is none other than gun prohibitionist Mayor Michael Bloomberg who, by the way, was one of the first to start dancing in the blood of the Aurora shootings. Bloomberg's office issued a "report" which was featured in the British newspaper The Telegraph back in February. Bloomberg criticized KSL.com for allowing firearms classifieds and said that the Mormon Church "owns (a) unregulated gun sale website".

That is a far cry from saying the Mormons are selling "unregulated" guns.

Most Americans and probably most Michiganders think of Mitt Romney nowadays when they hear the words "Mormon Church". With his presidential run, Romney has become the most prominent Mormon in America. This, in my opinion, is why Ms. Spencer ran with the headline she did. She wanted to tar Romney with her absurd claims about private gun sales in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado shooting. Mind you, the shooter there legally purchased all of his firearms at big box sporting good stores and underwent a FBI NICS background check.

As I said in the headline, this is yellow journalism at its worst.