Journal News (Hudson)

Considering the enormous amount of negative publicity that the gun-hating New York regional newspaper the Journal News generating for itself during its recent crusade to unveil the names of local gun owners, you might think that no one  would attempt to imitate the stunt.

Such concerns are of little concern to the New York Times, however. As NewsBusters and MRC have documented repeatedly over the years, the Times is vehemently anti-gun. Thankfully, however, the Times's attempts to expose innocent New Yorkers who own guns was just denied by a state appellate court.

The suburban New York paper that caused a nationwide uproar over its online interactive map of gun permit owners in two counties has finally removed the chart from its website.

The map prompted thousands of complaints to the paper which also prompted the anti-gun paper to hire its own armed guards supposedly to protect its employees. The removal of the map was preceded by a new state law which protects gun permit holders’ privacy:

Another home included in an interactive map of gun permit holders published by the Lower Hudson Valley’s Journal News shortly before Christmas has been burglarized. This time, according to the related report at Newsday, "The thieves ransacked the house Wednesday night, breaking into two safes on the home's third floor and stealing a third safe." The third safe, in what was either an amazing coincidence or yet another direct result of the interactive map’s publication, is the one which contained the homeowners' guns. Imagine that.

More details from Timothy O'Connor's Newsday report, wherein officials compete to distance the crime from the map, follow the jump.

The Lower Hudson Valley's Journal News based in White Plains, New York has been very tight-lipped since it published an interactive map showing the names and addresses of pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties. The Washington Post's Erik Wemple reports that the paper has hired "a Manhattan public relations, marketing and government affairs firm" whose job appears to involve denying interview requests and issuing "no comment" statements.

Predictably, the one media outlet which has been granted access by the Journal News is the New York Times, whose Christine Haughney filed a report on January 6. In that dispatch, she quoted Dwight R. Worley, the "tax reporter" who cooked up the idea of publishing the map, putting forth the following defense of his handiwork: "The people have as much of a right to know who owns guns in their communities as gun owners have to own weapons." How disingenuous, as will be seen after the jump.

A White Plains, New York home included in an interactive map of gun permit holders published by the Lower Hudson Valley's Journal News shortly before Christmas was burglarized on Saturday. According to a local CBS News report, in what was either about the oddest coincidence one can imagine or a direct result of that map's publication, "the burglars' target was the homeowner's gun safe."

The odds are clearly with the latter. A more detailed report filed by Timothy O'Connor and Meghan E. Murphy at Newsday on Sunday and updated on Monday provides more details (HT to an e-mailer; bolds are mine):

The media agenda against guns is nothing new. But recent mass shootings have encouraged supposedly neutral journalists to push for gun regulation instead of reporting the facts surrounding the tragedies.

One thing the media seldom mention is that both the Newtown and Aurora shootings occurred in gun free zones. In the Clackamas Town Center Shooting in Oregon, however, a gunman was stopped when someone with a concealed carry permit intervened. There were only two casualties in this shooting which received little media attention. If this incident was mentioned, the concealed carry part of the story was almost completely ignored.

Many of those who expressed outrage at the publication of a two-county interactive map of pistol permit owners by Gannett's White Plains, New York-based Journal News just before Christmas have raised serious concerns that the paper's action would directly harm law-abiding citizens. Evidence is pouring in that those fears are legitimate.

Fox News, doing something the wire services should have been begun within days of the map's publication, has unsurprisingly found that "Reformed crooks say the New York newspaper ... did a great service – to their old cronies in the burglary trade." Additionally, a Newsday report identifies four concrete examples of negative impact: "Inmates are taunting corrections officers" at an area jail; one of the counties' sheriffs says that it's "hurting law enforcement as a whole"; a Rockland County Democratic legislator who currently doesn't own a gun says "he now fears for his safety" and will get one; and a divorced woman who says her ex-husband tried to strangle her is worried that "now he can find me." Excerpts from the two news reports follow the jump.

Turnabout is fair play.

A week ago, Gannett's White Plains, New York-based Journal News published an interactive map containing " the addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties" (previous related posts are here, here, and here). Like so many others throughout the U.S. and even throughout the world, Dylan Skriloff, Editor-in-Chief at the Rockland County Times, which calls itself "Rockland's Official Newspaper Since 1888," did not take it well, nor should he have. In a Thursday editorial, he blasted the Journal News and chose to publish "the home addresses of Journal News editors, publishers and the Gannet CEO to make a point; what’s good for the goose is good for the gander" (he also included phone numbers). Excerpts from his write-up follow the jump (bolds are mine):

In response to Gannett's Jounal News headquartered in White Plains, New York publishing an interactive map containing the names and addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties (previous related posts are here and here), blogger Robert Cox at NewRochelleTalk.com (HT Instapundit) has produced an interactive map at a post entitled "Where are the Journal News employees in your neighborhood?"

It contains names, addresses, and various forms of Internet presence. Some of his narrative follows the jump:

Here's another entry for the "They can dish it out but can't take it" file.

Jammie Wearing Fool is reporting, with supporting links, that Editor CynDee Royle at the Journal News headquartered in White Plains, New York, which on Saturday, as noted on Monday at NewsBusters, published an interactive map showing the names and address of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland Counties, has taken down her Facebook page and made her Twitter account private (the latter may have been the case before the article was published). The paper has also recognized the outrage the published map cause, is offering a truly lame defense, and claims it didn't get everything it wanted (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

What similarities are there between a domestic terrorist organization and the alleged journalists at the Journal News headquartered in White Plains, New York? At least two biggies: total lack of respect for privacy and complete disregard for others' safety. The domestic terror group Earth First has an "EAT(IT) "Eco Assassin Team (in Training)," which has tired of "the stale old debate about adopting nonviolence as a movement principle." Accordingly, the Earth First Journal (HT to J. Christian Adams at PJ Media; those wishing to go to the original need to go there first, as I would rather not directly link) has published a top ten "'Eco-F***ers Prank-Hit List,' at least until we come up with something more creative."

The Journal News has published its own (conveniently unbylined) list, complete with interactive maps. The maps contain "the addresses (and names) of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties." Really: