By Sara Tipton
This week the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence delivered a petition demanding that journalist Emily Miller be fired. They allege Miller has violated a “code of ethics” by maintaining a pro-gun stance on the air. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Miller spoke at an event put on by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a pro-gun group, making statements that infuriated anti-gunners everywhere. They accuse Miller of advocating violent insurrection when she stated that “There’s the ‘cold, dead fingers’ option” if the organization’s political activism is unsuccessful. At the rally, Miller told attendees that the District of Columbia “…is not part of America, because they don’t recognize the Second Amendment.” . . .
Miller has publicly stood up to control activists for much of her career and has become a vocal mouthpiece for the gun rights movement. The CSGV claims she therefore has no business reporting in their area. “[Miller has] no business serving as the “chief investigative reporter” of a television station covering the region’s affairs because she speaks out against the “democratically-enacted gun laws of the District of Columbia and Maryland,” according to a press release put out by the CSGV.
The CSGV states that in its code of ethics, the Society of Professional Journalists states that journalists should “act independently” by avoiding “conflicts of interest, real or perceived” and “political…activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality.”
CSGV mouthpiece Ladd Everitt opines that,
“By the standards of her profession, Emily Miller has no business calling herself a journalist. Miller’s crusade against popular gun laws has been a professional one since the beginning. At this point, area residents can have no reasonable expectation that she will provide objective, impartial coverage on matters of concern to them. If Miller wishes to behave like a pundit and activist, then WTTG should replace her with an actual reporter.”
Apparently, expressing an opinion on the right to keep and bear arms is unwelcome in certain areas. But for some reason, the CSGV’s journalistic standards are different for reporters who oppose Second Amendment freedoms. We must have missed the anti-gun org’s demand that openly anti-gun journalists lose their jobs. Surely it’s just an oversight, though.