On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Times reprinted a twisted account of NRA’s efforts to rescue a Florida shooting range under attack by bureaucrats from the Southwest Florida Water Management District. Their source was Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun news website, The Trace.
The Times published the story of how NRA helped end the long-term harassment by the water district, which goes by the acronym Swiftmud, without any fact-checking. In it, The Trace demonized the intervention of Marion Hammer, the former NRA president and effective gun-rights advocate, on behalf of the Skyway Trap & Skeet Club.
Last year, Americas1stFreedom.org’s series, No Trace of Truth, documented its anti-gun bias. When the Times reprints the website’s propaganda unchecked, it erodes public confidence in all news media, as evidenced by Monday’s AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research/American Press Institute poll that found only 6 percent of Americans “have a lot of confidence in the media.”
