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On the crime beat, both NBC and ABC came up with stories that contained less than meets the eye. ABC's David Wright (subscription required) latched onto the statistic that 120 gun stores nationwide accounted for 55,000 different firearms that were used in crimes or, in percentage terms, 1% of all stores sold 58% of all crime-related weapons. A case in point was a handgun sold by R&B Guns of Hampton Va that was used to kill Russell Timoshenko, an NYPD police officer. That seemed like a problem in need of urgent remedy--except that Wright's statistic has a date from a 2004 study, and R&B was closed by Virginia authorities "several years ago."
NBC's Mark Potter appeared to be warning us of a dangerous trend: "The FBI says bank robberies nationwide are on the rise." Then came the data--there were only 237 more robberies in 2006 than in 2005, an increase of just 4%. Their total annual loot is $70m nationwide from fewer than 7,000 robberies--which means that an average bank job nets a mere single grand. So why would such trivial events warrant network news coverage? Because all banks are equipped with security video allowing Potter's report to be peppered with dramatic pix of real life robbers.
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