Let me tell you a story:
Many years ago, just after the Brixton riots, I was a TA soldier in regiment that wishes it does not have such a high profile . Annually a composite troop drawn from the two TA regts would travel to the US to spend a fortnight training with our National Guard opposite numbers. (And what a shower they were - just kit bunnies..)
Somehow a Guardian journalist got hold of information that TA units in general (luckily not ours in particular) were going to the US to train alongside the US NG. He then made the entirely erroneous extrapalation that, since NG units have a role to support the civil powers, and that since it was an NG unit that had opened fire on students at Kent State in 1970 (
report), that TA units would be training to carry arms on the UK streets to enable them to support the Home Office/Police in riot control.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, and I called him to explain just this, but no apology or retraction was ever made.