Staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon Stephen Gutowski told CN Live's host Colion Noir on Wednesday that NBC's report on "Ghost Guns" was not only misleading but was "pure sensationalism."
Noir played a clip of the NBC report, and said that it seems the point of the report was to sensationalize the idea of guns and firearm deaths. He noted that there is a consistent lack of information in reports such as these, and that they "capitalize on ignorance" of "low information voters."
He asked Gutowski if he thought that this was a deliberate attempt or the reporters were just unfamiliar with guns.
"Well, I think it's a mixture of both," Gutowski said.
Gutowski said that for the most part, the average reporter is not too informed on the subject.
"Most of them aren't gun owners," he said. "They haven't been around guns. They get information from, you know, gun control groups that is often inaccurate itself and they tend to think of those people as experts."
But Gutowski believes that in the case of "Ghost Guns," the framing of the information was intentional.
"Sometimes, and I think in this case with Rosen and NBC News, sometimes it's intentional," he said. "I mean, sometimes it's just pure sensationalism. I think that's what this piece was."
Prior to these comments, he said that the person who helped to mill the ghost gun together was unhappy with the portrayal of this topic through this report.
Gutowski added that he contacted the ATF to confirm that felons still cannot own firearms, "despite what NBC News might want to tell people."
Gutowski called NBC's "Ghost Gun" report "terrible journalism."