J’den McAdory of Severn, Maryland, doesn’t like a new gun control law recently signed by Gov. Wes Moore, so he protested by parading with an AR-15 at an elementary school bus drop-off site. 
A news reporter tweeted:
And he’s catching flak. Former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said, “Nope, there are not two sides of bringing an assault weapon to an elementary school bus stop.”
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan said, “Both sides? Seriously?”
Twitter users also weighed in. One said, “Side one: The kids are scared by a man with a gun. Side two: A man with a gun is scaring the kids.” Another comment was less printable.
Well, I think there are two sides to this story. On one side, the police said it isn’t illegal. The other side is that it ought to be.
The Supreme Court defines a lot of things as “free speech,” including art and flag-burning. As far as I know, brandishing a gun in public isn’t one of them. It’s a threat. That’s simple enough.
Figuring out how media should report this story is trickier. Reporters are taught in journalism school to get both sides of the story. It’s a matter of fairness, journalistic neutrality, and can help prevent defamation lawsuits.
But that doesn’t mean journalists should never take sides, or give equal time to opposing points of view, if one of them is reasonable and the other absurd.
That’s basically the issue here. There are two sides to the gun control debate, and both have a right to be heard, but this isn’t the right way to conduct that debate, and journalists shouldn’t be afraid to say so.