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Mr. Luddite

On 11/5/2014 9:11 AM, wrote:
On Wednesday, November 5, 2014 9:01:50 AM UTC-5, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 11/5/2014 8:44 AM, wrote:
On Wednesday, November 5, 2014 8:35:27 AM UTC-5, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 11/5/2014 8:22 AM, KC wrote:
On 11/5/2014 12:54 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 05 Nov 2014 00:00:41 -0500, KC wrote:

I doubt it... Could be that they fudged the circumstances or edited
though. CNN and even more MSNBC have been caught several times doing
things like that.. I am not saying this story is fudged, but it's very
possible if nobody ever really got busted.

I think that if this was a real news story, they would have questioned
the sellers after the sale. I wonder why they didn't.
By fuzzing the faces and not addressing it any further, even to the
point of saying the seller refused an interview, they make this look
pretty hokey.
I agree that if this really happened the way they presented it, laws
were broken. My first question is where does the producer live? They
attempted to buy guns in a couple of states and the transactions on
tape were in Tennessee. I bet the producer lives in Georgia. (CNN is
based in Atlanta)
When BATF starts rounding up the criminals, they have to start with
the guy who taped his crime.

Well, can we for the purpose of this discussion view this "report" as a
hypothetical but not proven to be real yet? Of course that kills the
perspective of those in the discussion riding on this as "evidence"...

The role of journalism in a report like this isn't to effect the arrest
or apprehension of those breaking the law. It is to expose the law
breaking.

Journalists enjoy a privilege called "confidentiality of sources" and
are not required to identify the people in the report. That's why their
images are blurred.

Of course Dateline's "To catch a predator" had no problem following through. Many "news" stories have been staged, and later revealed. That this one hasn't doesn't mean it's real.

That show was specifically done in concert with law enforcement who were
conducting sting operations. Not really the same thing.

"Dateline NBC aired an investigative report on November 17, 1992, titled "Waiting to Explode". The 60-minute program focused on General Motors' Rounded-Line Chevrolet C/K-Series pickup trucks allegedly exploding upon impact during accidents due to the poor design of fuel tanks. Dateline 's footage showed a sample of a low-speed accident with the fuel tank exploding. In reality, Dateline NBC producers had rigged the truck's fuel tank with remotely controlled model rocket engines to initiate the explosion. The program did not disclose the fact that the accident was staged."

But that is.

I remember that. Agreed, it was proven it was staged. In their
defense, NBC issued a statement that the problem with the GM trucks
was well known and documented. They just couldn't get the thing to
catch fire for their filming purposes, so they faked what caused the
leaking fuel to ignite. Not exactly honest and they should have
acknowledged it in the documentary.

It turns out that the problem with the side saddle tanks in the trucks
*was* real though. Here's what the Center For Auto Safety says about them:

"The side saddle fuel tank design installed in over 10 million trucks -
all 1973-87 General Motors full-size pickups and cab-chassis trucks
(pickups without beds) and some 1988-91 dual cab or RV chassis - is the
worst auto crash fire defect in the history of the U.S. Department of
Transportation. Based on data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting
System (formerly known as the Fatal Accident Reporting System), over
2,000 people were killed in fire crashes involving these trucks from
1973 through 2009. (Attachment A is a list of fatal C/K fire crashes by
state since 1993.) This is more than twenty times as many fatalities as
in the infamous Ford Pinto. Despite a voluntary recall request from the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in April 1993
(Attachment B) and an initial defect determination by Transportation
Secretary Federico Pena in October 1994 (Attachment C), GM stubbornly
refused to initiate a recall."

GM has not always been forthcoming in acknowledging defects in their
products. It caught up to them with the recent "key" thing though.