New Rolling Stone Profile Shows Why Media Should Stop Mainstreaming Pro-Gun Extremist Larry Pratt
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 14th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
New Rolling Stone Profile Shows Why Media Should Stop Mainstreaming Pro-Gun Extremist Larry Pratt
A new profile of Larry Pratt, the odious executive director of fringe group Gun Owners of America (GOA) documents Pratt’s lengthy history of extremism while noting that he is still treated by media as an authority in the gun debate.
The Pratt profile, authored by The American Independent Institute (TAII) fellow Alexander Zaitchik, was published July 14 as part of a RollingStone.com package, “America’s Gun Violence Epidemic.” Other articles in the series include an interview with former New York City mayor and gun violence prevention advocate Michael Bloomberg, a message from Richard Martinez, whose son was murdered in the recent Isla Vista, California mass shooting, stories from gunshot wound survivors, and an interactive map on gun violence in America.
Interspersed with accounts of Pratt’s association with anti-Semitic and white supremacist groups, his call for the quarantine of AIDS victims, his support for the death squads of a genocidal dictator, and his longstanding engagement with bizarre anti-government conspiracy theories, Zaitchik recounts how Pratt is regularly called on by mainstream media outlets to participate in the debate over gun laws.
Indeed, a Media Matters analysis of cable news and major newspapers finds that media regularly turns to Pratt despite his place in the far-right wing fringe. Since the December 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Pratt has appeared during evening and Sunday programming on CNN seven times and three times each on MSNBC and Fox News.