as people all around the world count down the days to the new year our team is counting down the list of the most influential people of two thousand and twelve but this won't be your run of the mill memoranda no pop stars or you tube sensations made this list we'll tell you who did that. and looking at the other side of the coin far from the top we'll show you the biggest mainstream media flocks of the year and critically analyze the state of american journalism today. and a gun owners across the country are cheering a major for the right to bear arms in public has been upheld in illinois this locked and loaded issue always brings out heated debate on both sides we'll show you what the media has to say all about this.

it's thursday december thirteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for salinger watching our team. well we're winding down two thousand and twelve and you know what that means lots of looks back at the last twelve months the best the worst does and the most significant event sent people of the year all here to r.t. america we decided to put together a list of our own of the most influential people of the year our intrepid producers put together a longer list they actually had twenty three names on it and every member of our news team chose their top five and that finalist was compiled from the winners so here is our top five most influential people of the year number five a german chancellor angela merkel not only is she the first woman to hold the top german political post she's also considered the de facto leader of the e.u. an organization that holds the economic many countries and its so-called hand

number four a seventeen year old trayvon martin who was shot and killed back in february of two thousand and twelve in sanford florida his death sparked a nationwide discussion about guns stereotypes and about a law called stand your ground number three a private first class of bradley manning manning was arrested in may of two thousand and ten and believed to be responsible for leaking classified information to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks he has spent much of this year preparing for hearings and a court martial and the nature of both his crime and his punishment has been at the forefront of discussion in this country for most of the year. number two the person who shot the forty seven percent video that showed presidential candidate mitt romney speaking to his donors this video is believed to steer what was a very close race into a new direction and the number one most influential person of two thousand and twelve according to our team erica is the hacktivist group anonymous they've been around for nearly a decade but really became much more well known this year for various things just

to name one after the file hosting service mega upload was taken down anonymous went in and took down the websites of the justice department the f.b.i. and more to talk more about these pics we brought in our producer adriano who said earlier today i first asked her what was anonymous biggest movie of the year. i mean what's interesting if you look at it long term i mean people would point out the you know the stratfor hack which is as we all know when anonymous went in and hacked the intelligence firm known as stratfor however and that happened in december but exactly but they were the release was actually documents were actually twenty twelve even now when they first came out it wasn't really that you know media organizations didn't find it as important but they are still learning a lot of interesting things through that information however many people here are cited other things like. israel which is where anonymous took down many of the servers of the israeli government many of the officials what official websites

and also syria where they tried to keep the internet on line for many even though it was virtually shut down for a couple of days or gaza as well i think during the crisis and i know a lot of us sort of went on to i think it was the i don't know if it was a prime minister or somebody in israel his facebook page was was hacked into by anonymous and there was a free palestine put up and just sort of the wallpaper of his face absolutely was so really people were you know when they were talking about it on this they would really just put all these all these together and just see this as a sign of the growing influence on the internet so i think that's the big takeaway from this isn't just you know sort of a group of computer savvy people these are people who definitely have strong opinions about certain things and make that known and i think sort of the bigger picture here is that they're able to do this the fact that they're able to hack into the f.b.i. web site kind of shows you

a lot about their influence and their power i want to talk now about the person who shot the forty seven percent video i was surprised by it by this one at first because it's not like after it aired president obama sailed to victory in a presidency there was still sort of a roller coaster for both campaigns in the polls but i think. the bigger aspect of this is you know sort of the issues of technology and privacy so i mean you just said it yourself perfectly it wasn't like it was just you know smooth sailing after that was released it was talking to a lot of people around here in the office they save the same thing that say that this was an example of politicians realizing that they're always on their own you know no matter what you say when you say when you're speaking at a private event to a group you don't know exactly you who will be held accountable for what you say and you know the politics and technology are you know coming together in very strange ways i mean he obviously wasn't the first wasn't the only person to suffer some sort of setback due to

a mishap or quote i mean we all remember todd akin to be all remember all these other republicans that said some things on camera that i'm sure they wish they hadn't said they were speaking to the media the media exactly but now you can even even before maybe twenty or so years ago you could still get away with that but things nowadays they go viral and this is a great example of that i'm talking about bradley manning the alleged source for really the largest intelligence leak in u.s. history he now faces twenty two counts for his court martial and could land in prison for the rest of his life i know that for the first time just in the last few weeks we actually heard bradley manning speak in his pretrial hearing. it's been going on for a long time and i think you know his lawyer has said this case should be thrown out over all based on you know his lawful pretrial punishment so i think this case is bringing up a whole lot about you know classified information about really trying to report wrongdoing i mean certainly that video of the apache helicopter pilots kind of

treating war as a video game just killing anyone and that got in their past sort of i mean this was a video of bradley manning didn't do that he just released the video yeah absolutely and as you said it certainly made waves however you know that information did come out two years ago so you might be asking so why is it's twenty . why is he influential now well you you put it yourself you put a beautifully which is right now we heard him speak for the first time and him describing that punishment and describing punishment for essentially you know disseminating information has broad effects and that's essentially what people picked him i think to just to expand the discussion a slight bit and that is the subject of torture a lot of people say that you know when he was first brought in that he was he was kept in solitary confinement for nine months this is before any charges were filed against him he still has not had an actual court martial but his treatment once he

was arrested. is something that's really raised a lot of red flags and really raise a lot of questions about torture and about the effectiveness of torture both on u.s. citizens like bradley manning and brought on prisoners in guantanamo bay how effective is it so i think sort of as a symbol. with the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks and of this punishment that he received for this alleged crime it's really raise a lot of question absolutely and also it's sort of brought back the question of what is newsworthy and what isn't the new york times as we you know we know got a lot of flack for not sending someone to that pretrial hearing that we're talking about where we first heard him speak and it brought up a lot of a lot of criticisms of what is news what is not news and it's sort of brought that back to say like hey so if things you think are important aren't being covered and speak out because you may you have a voice in this our number four pick your was trayvon martin this one was pretty

understandable to me i think there's a lot to say about this and like most of our picks his shooting death did not result in the changing of laws it didn't result really in the changing of policy but it did spark a nationwide discussion about race about you know stereotypes that people have about you know a young kid where. a hoodie and about guns and also about these laws which by the way some version of which you know the stand your ground laws are in more than half of the states in this country and you know what is stand your ground and when can it be used and i think the accused killer of trayvon martin george zimmerman is trying to say well it should be able to be used whatever and again i think that you you had a great point at the beginning when you were saying that it opened a conversation and trayvon is sort of like bradley manning is this is a symbol i mean when the president united states comes out and says you know my son could look like trayvon that has repercussions and in in

a country where you know we do have race conversations we you know we some might argue that we don't have them openly we don't have them candidly and you know this was a an opportunity to be able to go and examine real quick because we're almost out of time let's go to. someone self-explanatory sort of wears the pants in the euro family why do you think she made the list what you said yourself right there i mean she essentially has the fate of the eurozone in her hands so very easy pick of course this was not a you know widespread poll but we did want to poll people in our newsroom we consider to be you know experienced and intelligent and that's what we came up with appreciate you coming on air to break it down with with me producer adrienne it was that. all right so we were just discussing r t america's list of the most influential people of twenty twelve we want to take now a look now at a different kind of list the pointer institute a school dedicated to teaching media leaders and also promoting excellence in journalism puts together a list every year on the biggest media fails last year's list included the numerous

flubs by media outlets mistaking the name osama for obama when announcing the death of osama bin laden this year the number one media error had to do with a certain supreme court ruling on the affordable care act otherwise known as obamacare if you've forgotten let me refresh your memory the individual mandate has been ruled unconstitutional justices have just got it all the centerpiece provisions of the obama health care law if in fact that's the final word on the individual mandate there could be a little bit more complicated by getting complete examination we're getting inflicting information as you say there's been some confusion there are conflicting reports coming in from inside the supreme court so let's let's i'm drawing any final conclusions are still trying to figure this out because as workers we are trying to do the best we can right now to sort through it and we need it later lower third may not be correct or a take several minutes as

a reading through this again i we are reading now that the entire line has been held. well the pointer institute dished out equal criticism to fox and c.n.n. for their poor coverage of the health care ruling i think that those on media outlets want to get the story before getting the facts i spoke earlier with georgetown university journalism professor christopher chambers for his view on these reports mean i would be there was a little tinge against fox in there and i would probably be a little bit more critical of because the both of their mistakes are basically allegory or metaphors for what's wrong with both networks c.n.n. did rush they rushed they had not prepared adequately even their army of pundits had not really laid the ground adequately in terms of legal analysis fox on the other hand they did not miss report the story they misinterpreted the entire decision and everything that their coverage their evening show punditry all the stuff they put on fox nation the romney usually throw to their fans was all geared

towards this this. being overturned so when it wasn't they were kind of caught with their pants down sort of like what happened on election night so i mean you do have a rush to get the news out first to be the new digital media out there and maybe even meet its needs but i think with c.n.n. you know when you saw what they had to do for damage control you really saw that they were saying we are the dinosaur we tried to run with the little mammals and we didn't do it we and we made a mistake with fox it was we didn't make a mistake it's i would be a little more critical of fox but again they were trying to compete with this more nimble digital media yes certainly with twitter out there i remember i was working and i had you know we had all three televisions on m.s.n. b.c. c.n.n. and fox and then i had you know twitter of course and i was literally getting opposite tweets coming and i was one of those things you know i wasn't in the

supreme court so i didn't see it and it wasn't you know a large document but this is not a time in journalism as we had you know. fifteen twenty thirty years ago the whole report would be read and analyzed before any sort of announcement was made so i think it's every major decision of discourse even going back to the time of pamphlets and printing presses in the ninety three eighteenth century it was marbury vs madison things were read first and then the decisions were announced to the press this was one of those times where you know it really again is allegory for what's wrong well i think it deserves the award for the british media feel that it was interesting point compiled a bunch of different things i want to talk about a couple more on they also sort of chose a correction of the year you know when when newspapers write a story or publications write a story and then they come back and correct it so this year i went to the economist for a legitimate mistake but they actually came back with a pretty witty response so basically they said an earlier version of this article

claimed that journalists at bloomberg businessweek could be disciplined for sipping a spritzer at work this is not true sorry you must have been drunk on the job so this is you know the economists talk a competitor bloomberg business week and they were doing a story about sort of drinking in the workplace and how it's perceived but i thought that was kind of fun we will people people are much more forgiving of that i mean then you also have another aspect to me there's a lot more hacking being done especially digital medium and that could mess the news flow up the decision that was an allegory for really what's wrong with the big media outlets but in general when you have flowed headlines and you know this is thing and then you know the famous book over with the patrol we're about to show that you do. since you brought it up this is what kind of thing that really just baffled newsrooms around the country including ours the denver t.v. station actually aired a graphic with

a doctored title of the prop paula broadwell book about david petraeus the title of course of that book was all in. and as you can see here they put something different maybe. not all in so it's baffling to me i've worked both here and in a lot of local news stations usually i'm sure with somebody in the graphics department just messing around and something funny about how that aired is just crazy it is i mean and that's a breakdown and in the whole production of the tour you know flow right there but i mean again that's really how can i put this is not really bad for the news outlets because it's generating more eyeballs on the show on the show and on their if their website got more clicks that day the people you know the twitter sphere explodes you see it repeated on facebook the picture just goes on instagram and everything you know doubles up on itself you know and it wasn't that serious i mean you didn't have somebody you know of the hoaxes where somebody was so they were dead and they

weren't or miss reporting a breaking news story where a lot of people have been killed or etc etc let me ask you this i mean you just mentioned twitter facebook instagram there's so many more what do you tell your students about this i mean especially in that first example we gave you know sort of the rush to get the information out there what's the lesson here i mean do you think maybe. people will you know mainstream media alice's large media stations will take a step back and say you know what maybe getting it first first ten seconds ahead of everybody else doesn't matter i don't know miller there but taking an exam on that right as we speak. we are not we are sneaking in a little device to watch my answer but i mean the key is the preparation ahead of time the production research the editorial research all the chess pieces on the ground to be able to interpret the stuff accurately and quickly they have retrenched on that they have cut money from that they've cut you know in terms of concept and philosophy it's now all let me get it first and let me fit it into or

narrative if you have fox you have that layer to the key is to her. the right people on the ground to be able to report that stuff quickly and accurately no matter what the supreme court hasn't necessarily change the way it writes decision goes to them right that hasn't changed but if you have someone with a little more experience that actually knows what to look for knows what page to go to their line to get scoop and the stairs a clerk in there who is tweeting and that's very unlikely so i mean again you have to get out of that mindset and understand you're subject to your subject is i mean and that goes and that's all preparation which they don't do well it's already making me excited to see what we're going to be talking about next year. christopher chambers journalism professor at georgetown university good luck to your students taking their exam right now it's. still ahead on our t.v. is sticking to their guns illinois seventh district court has upheld the right for citizens to bear arms and public and gun owners across the country are rejoicing

that smoking coming up next. we'll.

let alone. worse you are the only one i. want. to give you that we're going to bring. now to a story of a gun ban that is no longer illinois was the only state that completely banned carrying concealed weapons that is until tuesday when the ban was struck down by a court of appeals in a two to one decision the seventh circuit court of appeals gave legislators in springfield six months to tweak the state law and settle the court's concerns gun rights activists are pleased by the decision they thought the court affirmed their

constitutional right to bear arms by offering them an opportunity for self defense once they leave their doorstep their glee is not only shared by politicians. politicians in chicago rather a city plagued with gun violence have vowed to fight the court's decision in the name of public safety illinois attorney general lisa madigan has yet to say whether she will appeal to the supreme court to discuss this ban i'm joined now by brian doherty senior editor at reason brian is also the author of the book gun control on trial inside the supreme court battle over the second amendment. hey there brian now let's break this down a little bit what exactly was banned in illinois what does it mean to carry concealed weapons. it just means that you have the legal rights to your weapon. concealed means all the flavor it's not good for people watching t.v. with different states and localities different regulations about open carry concealed carry in some areas and going up is perfectly legal to have

a gun visible on your panel even though that alarms a lot of people but it wouldn't be illegal it went away however if you said with the only state they give you allow you to have your weapon on your person outside your phone at all and the seventh circuit court of appeals with the spoiler that that's not constitutional under the standard set in the heller case which i. think . is interesting if you take a look at the state of illinois and particularly its major city chicago there were some major major crime problems i'm wondering what you think i mean without a law allowing concealed weapons these crimes problems exist and do you think this new law will make things better or worse. the best criminological data says that you can't really say for sure whether in the current system carrying a gun they're made from work or it makes. you can sort of look at certain data forms like you for example before the heller case guns were legal after that were there were legal the mayor of the sleeve was really upset when that law got

overturned predicted that there would be a horrible injuries and gun violence and the latest data which came out showed that absolutely not true in fact it's probably going to have its first year of under three bigger murders that it's not in decades but i think just as an addendum to that story brian i mean i think it's important to point out that d.c. as a whole has changed quite a bit not only with its gun laws but with the people that live here it also has i think six of the top ten most wealthy cities or towns are around this area so so i think that. you know a lot of the makeup of the people here has changed as well. no comment on that or if you want to say that the united states if they were pretty much precarious. just want to do nearly all of them now and they weren't crying and going murder all in. the early ninety's but now there is absolutely no evidence that more guns more

going on with you know more i want to know their only evidence that it will less. not because it's about people who are afraid that oh my gosh more people are going to carry guns are going to be more violent they don't have it. well clearly gun rights advocates are pleased with this decision but it doesn't take much to get them defensive i want to play a fox news clip from today this was talking about the tragic shooting in an oregon mall less than seventy two hours after the deadly shooting at a mall in oregon some gun control advocates are making a new case for limiting certain gun sales police say the suspect jacob tyler roberts used a stolen and a ar fifteen assault weapon we've entered this area where we want to ban them and people see the situations like this as opportunities to try to ban guns that for the most part the people who want to ban guns don't understand the difference between gun am gun be it let me ask you this how how much of this is an attempt by

you know well meaning americans to make themselves feel better about something we cannot control which is the deranged actions of a madman you know we can't plan against that we can't control against so we turn to something like ok well done that we can regulate. i mean by and i guess i want to ask you i mean what do you think about this back and forth discussion that we seem to have in the us every time there's some sort of gnashing. that cannot control ask that which was mentioned in that clip it's very important most of those laws that people imagine that they want to put in place to restrict gun rights if you look at the horrible instances that they think they're going to prevent those was working prevented them at all for example there is no law against area weapons if that were the prevent someone engine if you go in public and murder people from carrying a weapon just because oh my gosh will be breaking the law now even when people say oh my oh my gosh people who are crazy and obviously the judge after the fact that anyone a lot of people in public agrees the shouldn't be allowed to get weapons well in

almost all cases the person who did it didn't do anything to mark them as read the in any way we could impose that limitation on them so it really is a sad fact that they left you think a lot to make you disappear from the face of the earth which we all know they can't but there is very little but along the hill where i know there's been a lot of them this year. the mass public shooting let's talk to you about i mean i know for your book you researched sort of the the legals a judicial aspect of this question i mean what did you find that was most surprising because this is something that you know there's always the threat that it will be reheard by the supreme court that you know a case can come along that change things you know because the n.r.a. as we know cannot lobby the members of the supreme court but what do you think about sort of the legal aspect of this. the book interesting thing i learned about writing that book is this that there's the n.r.a. on one side and the brady campaign on the other side

a certain subset of americans for a very one way or the other about this i found that for most intents and purposes the data about gun control as the league has been pretty much over in america since the ninety after the brady bill with after the assault weapon ban which was then later when it went out not even the democrats who were reputed to be very anti-gun have done much if anything at all to restrict the right gun owners got very mad about the obama administration if they thought obama folder a gun i think it's probably true that obama and holder do hate guns but they're politically savvy enough to understand that when controlled not a winning issue for democrats there are many democrats who actually blame both for a loss of congress in ninety four and al gore's loss in two thousand that democrats . pretty much i don't think there's going to be a lot changing without going along the united states now whether they're going to be more and more that they just like illinois lightly increase people's ability to carry their weapons public and there's not going to be very much counter even

though groups like the n.r.a. are going to try to scare everyone by thing obama that i don't think that well i tell you what that ferry has certainly voted well for many people who sell guns because i know you know i did a story last year i haven't seen this year's numbers yet but last year on black friday a couple of years ago on black friday the number of guns sold or licenses applied for to get a gun was you know double what it had been in years past because a lot of people did worry that once president obama came into office that he would take your guns so so whether or not that theory is true it's been a good one for gun sellers i guess you could say always an interesting discussion we think it's important to have every once in awhile not so much that back and forth that we see on the mainstream media but just some of the other aspects of this i want to thank you for coming on the show today brian doherty author as gun control on trial inside the supreme court battle over the second amendment he's also a senior editor at reason dot com. well breaking news that is coming up in thirty

minutes here on r t i want to check in with abby martin now to see what's on the agenda today abby yesterday you had an awesome interview with all of her stone it was so good it was fun to watch everyone should watch it if they haven't yet what will you be bringing us today well one thing over so mentioned yesterday was kind of the propagandizing of american cinema now a lot of modern movies glorify war glorified torture so we're going to kind of smash through the zero dark thirty smash and bash the rail or accounting for you know the realistic kind of bin laden raid we're going to really tear through that cut through the propaganda one going off of all are stone we said a lot more coming up next check it out right thanks abbi and that is going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to our web site youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our web site r t dot com slash usa and you should of course if you're not already.