Ann Coulter | Oct 01, 2014

We're interrupting our Republican Senate 2014 Marathon this week for a brief note on the media. (But contribute to Scott Brown immediately, and please don't vote for the third-party, tea party candidate in Louisiana, right-wingers! Remember: Obamacare cannot be repealed without 66 votes in the Senate.)

I've barely been paying attention to the news, except to check Senate polls every night, because, as some of you may have noticed, I've been in the bat-cave under Swiss Guard protection, writing my next book. But based on only about an hour of media consumption a week, I've recently noticed mainstream "news" outlets telling huge whoppers, long ago disproved and forgotten.

First, this past Sunday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof repeated the canard about guns being dangerous to their owners. A "study in the journal Injury Prevention," he wrote, "found that the purchase of a handgun was associated with 2.4 times the risk of being murdered and 6.8 times the risk of suicide."

No kidding. As a lifelong subscriber to Injury Prevention, I could have told Kristof that people who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods or who have friends or professions that increase their likelihood of being killed -- or who plan to commit suicide -- are astronomically more likely to buy handguns than people whose lifestyles do not put them at such risks.

My own study, soon to be published in Injury Prevention -- and which I expect will similarly amaze Nick Kristof! -- establishes that people in hospitals are twice as likely to die within five years as people not in hospitals. To paraphrase Kristof: People think hospitals can save their lives. Nonsense!

And don't even get me started on my study on people in ambulances.

MSNBC's Toure repeated the old chestnut about emergency room admissions for domestic violence spiking on Super Bowl Sundays.

As I have noted at least a half-dozen times, this was a nonsense statistic invented by feminists and then cited as fact by a slew of major news outlets, culminating in a public service announcement during the 1993 Super Bowl that reminded viewers: "Domestic violence is a crime!" Finally, Washington Post reporter Ken Ringle, realizing that he was, in fact, a reporter, asked, Where'd you get that figure?

He called all the experts who had been cited as sources for the statistic. All of them told him it wasn’t true. "That's not what we found at all," said Janet Katz, professor of sociology and criminal justice and an author of one oft-cited study allegedly establishing the Super Bowl-wife-beating nexus. She said football games bore no relationship to emergency room admissions for domestic violence.

A week after Toure recycled this hoax from the '90s, MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski said on "Morning Joe": "Super Bowl Sunday has the highest rate of domestic violence."

So at least they correct their mistakes quickly over there.

Finally, The Washington Post's Carol Leonnig is doggedly pushing the hoax about Obama getting more threats than any previous president. (They don't make 'em like Ken Ringle anymore.)

Even after being corrected by an MSNBC host, Frances Rivera, last Sunday, Leonnig plowed ahead with her thoroughly disproved thesis, based on what someone had told her -- it was at either a DNC fundraiser or a Volvo dealership. And yes, Leonnig really was corrected by an MSNBC host for pushing an America-is-racist fabrication, which is like having Joseph Goebbels say to you, "Hey, lighten up on the Jews, would you?"

for more:
http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulte...99626/page/full


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