It’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between FOX News and CNN or MSNBC, especially when the topic is guns, especially after a mass shooting.
For at least seven years, FOX News has been citing fake mass-shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive – an anti-gun nonprofit we debunked years ago – in its digital and broadcast news stories. The reason is simple. The GVA inflates body counts, sometimes by more than 1,000%, so its overblown data has become catnip for the legacy media, which is constantly seeking more sensational headlines and news stories.
How does the GVA get its inflated numbers? They created their own definition of a mass shooting, of course. When most Americans hear the term, they picture a madman stalking the halls of a school or a shopping mall, coldly murdering innocent victims. What does not come to mind are rival drug crews shooting it out in Chicago, a deranged husband murdering his entire family, or a law-abiding gun owner acting in self-defense.
Yet for the GVA, anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm, it’s labeled a mass shooting. For example, according to the FBI and its more conservative definition, there were 30 mass shootings in 2019. The GVA claims there were 417. Despite the obvious bad math, the legacy media, politicians and the gun-ban industry treat GVA’s reports as gospel. The Biden-Harris Administration, The New York Times, National Public Radio, USA Today, The Trace and a host of other outlets all cite GVA’s fictitious data and use its overly broad definition when reporting about mass shootings.
The GVA uses dubious sources to gather its mass-shooting data, too. In a 2021 interview with the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project, Mark Bryant, a retired computer analyst and GVA’s executive director, admitted his researchers gather data from law enforcement Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as media accounts, even though the media is notorious for getting the facts wrong after a mass shooting.
Despite these bad sources and bad math, FOX News continues to cite the GVA in their stories, most recently Monday, after a mass-shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.
Missing attribution
Bryant founded the GVA in 2013, and FOX News began citing them as a news source just a few years later.
The network has never fully disclosed the nature of the anti-gun nonprofit to its viewers, or how it gathers its information. Here is a list of how FOX News has attributed the GVA data in news stories from the past seven years:
- 2016 – “using information collected by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan research group.”
- 2017 – “based on data from the Gun Violence Archive, which catalogs reports of gun violence in the U.S.”
- 2018 – “according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.”
- 2019 – “according to data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive (GVA).”
- 2020 – “according to the Gun Violence Archive.”
- 2021 – “according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).”
- 2022 – “The Gun Violence Archive defines mass shootings as ones where ‘4 or more [people are] shot or killed, not including the shooter.’”
- February, 2023 – “according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive.”
- March, 2023 – “according to the non-profit Gun Violence Archive.”
No comment
Both Trace Gallagher, FOX News Anchor/Chief Breaking News Correspondent, and Brett Baier, Chief Political Anchor and Executive Editor of Special Report, have cited GVA data recently in news stories.
I reached out to both on Twitter, warning them their credibility was at risk. Neither Gallagher nor Baier responded.
Hey @BretBaier, every time you cite "data" from the antigun Gun Violence Archive you lose credibility. We debunked them years ago: https://t.co/t3GSm95be6 pic.twitter.com/ORMpeiT9MI
— Lee Williams (@HT_GunWriter) March 27, 2023
Hey @tracegallagher. Why are you using biased mass-shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive, an anti-gun nonprofit we debunked years ago? For example, the GVA claims there were 417 mass shootings during 2019. The FBI says there were 30. pic.twitter.com/f62Rwzv6Up
— Lee Williams (@HT_GunWriter) April 10, 2023
Neither Irena Briganti, Senior Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications – FOX News Media, nor Porter Berry, Executive Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of FOX News Digital, responded to emails seeking their comments and an explanation as to why the network was pushing flawed and biased data in news stories.
Takeaways
I should disclose I am a regular FOX News viewer. I turn it on in the morning after my computer warms up and it stays on throughout my workday. I check the FOX News website at least hourly, and I cannot miss an episode of Tucker, who fearlessly holds the powerful accountable, or Gutfeld, who is always good for a laugh.
Still, what FOX News is doing is dead wrong. They are aiding and abetting the gun-banners by repeatedly citing overblown mass shooting data, which can lead the uninformed into believing that “gun violence” – another term FOX should stop using – is far worse that it really is. FOX is the most-watched cable news network in the country. Millions of people tune in to its programming. That could be a real gamechanger if the network would start telling the truth rather than promulgating debunked lies.
In my humble opinion, FOX should immediately stop citing GVA data and issue a clarification and an apology to its viewers. That’s what’s required journalistically, and it’s also the right thing to do. I hope FOX’s editors and producers take corrective action quickly because America is watching.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
There is no such thing as “gun violence” and anyone using these talking points is a complete idiot living in a deep state of denial. Humans are violent , guns are an inanimate object incapable of violence . Love to destroy the clowns talking points with ” reality” . Get a clue !
Fox’s Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters,Mark Levin and Laura Ingram are all solidly Second Amendment supporters. There might be others I’m unaware of, since I view television only in prime time. Hitting Fox is misplaced.
It’s simple, either you support the 2nd or you don’t. Support equals all citizens have the right to defend themselves and their nation with whatever weapons they choose and can make or obtain by legal means. Knives, swords. pistols, Ar-15’s, Browning M2, 105mm howitzers, P-51’s and MiG21’s
If you want to restrict that to non-scary single shot 22LR plinking rifles you don’t really support the 2nd and you are a traitor. It’s really that simple because I don’t remember the Constitution specifying limitations.
We quit paying for these liars to be pumped into our house via satellite a long time ago. They are ALL in the same business: try to steer people’s minds into accepting the unacceptable. As for all the comments on Lindsey Graham: Remember during the Judge Kavanough confirmation hearings that he practically did a shout out to, if I remember correctly, Justice Kagan and remarked how proud he was he helped “put her” on the Supreme Court. He was and is proud of putting these mindless traitors to our country in positions of authority where they should NEVER have been… Read more »
This has been going on for at least ten years that I know of.
By the way… Each and every moderate or conservative who voted for Biden needs to find the nearest wall and vigorously smack their forehead against it while shouting, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”. Without those votes, the 2020 ballot fraud would not have succeeded and Biden would not have been installed. You know who you are, now go find that wall and make sure it hurts.
I have notice the anti-gun reports across all media. Read the comments under the articles that allow comments. Most are pro-gun!
Yes, FOX is no longer a bastion of true facts- they’ve been corrupted. We must know the truth, not politically correctness!
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.”
― Helen Keller, The Open Door
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson
Lee – good observations regarding the disingenuous ‘reporting’ from gva (they don’t deserve all caps). That being said, how about doing an analysis of “gun violence” being the number one killer of ‘kids’? I suspect they use the same shady numbers for that as well. For instance, if 18 and 19 year olds (mostly gang affiliated) are subtracted from the total, it goes way down. These are likely the same sort who want 16 year olds to ‘vote’.
this helps my theory of how ignorant the people of this great country are getting most of them have no clue