Pundits Blame Sydney Slaughter on Protest Slogan
The rush to blame the shooting on a pro-Palestinian slogan reflects the extent to which media serve as an echo chamber for Israeli talking points.
When a Shooter Is Trans—and Not a Cis Male—Suddenly Identity Matters
Most media outlets focused on profiling the shooter—who was transgender—treating the shooting as an isolated case rather than part of a larger, systemic issue.
Media Blame NYC Shooting Not on Mayor Adams, But on Candidate Mamdani
Corporate media outlets from blamed Zohran Mamdani him for a horrific mass shooting that took place while he was out of the country.
Blaming Mass Shootings on Mental Illness Doesn’t Address Either Issue
Rationalizing the horrors of a mass shooting by emphasizing the perpetrator’s mental state does little to address the larger issue.
Murdoch Uses Nashville to Stoke Anti-Trans Hate
Rupert Murdoch’s media empire is using Hale’s transgender identity to ratchet up its campaign against transgender people.
Mass Shooters’ Most Common Trait—Their Gender—Gets Little Press Attention
Out of 20,000 pieces on recent mass shootings, FAIR found only 37 that linked shootings to toxic masculinity or misogyny.
NYT Responded to Subway Shooting With ‘Relentless String of Copaganda’
Alec Karakatsanis looked closely at how the New York Times used a crisis to boost police talking points and lies in some creative ways.
Blaming BLM for Homicide Rise—and Excusing Massive Spike in Gun Sales
Media show a striking lack of interest in the massive increase in gun sales as a driver of shootings and homicides.
On Gun Violence, ‘We Need the Federal Government to Take Bold Steps’
“We can’t continue to work in silos of doing this gun violence work, that urban areas’ gun violence, domestic violence, suicide rates from gun violence, all talked about in the report, all tie together, and you have to come together as one human community to really address these issues.”
Mental Illness Serves as Easy Scapegoat in Mass Murder Accounts
Could it be media would prefer to scour for evidence of a shooter’s mental illness or report on his dysfunctional past, rather than address what their own role could have been in encouraging killers, through being the very channel by which their “story” is told?
‘The NRA Has Basically Become Part of the Republican Party’
The NRA is a bit of a paper tiger, and I think more and more legislators will find that out as they challenge the NRA.
Next on NPR: Some Think You Should Put Out Fire With Gasoline
Reporting on the epidemic of mass shootings, All Things Considered gave a platform to the gun debate’s equivalents of anti-vaxxers, and gave no scrutiny to their claim that more guns are the solution to gun violence.
James Henry on Paradise Papers, Soraya Chemaly on Domestic Violence and Mass Killings
The millions of leaked documents dubbed the Paradise Papers bring some sunlight to an arena where secrecy is the point: the world of “offshore financial centers,” where a melange of the world’s wealthiest stash money, bilk governments and generally betray any notion of a social compact.
After Las Vegas Massacre, Media Again Help ISIS Terrorize
After mass violence, corporate media seem more than willing to spread the specter of ISIS responsibility without any objective basis.
Jorge Gutierrez and Soraya Chemaly on Orlando Massacre
While corporate media talked about “radical Islam,” others worked to maintain focus on the victims, with things like a short video from the group Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, featuring people talking about the killings and other violence they face.
Media Coverage Is ‘a Sort of Advertisement to Mass Murder’
Some social scientists have long been saying that events like mass shootings are contagious, and that the contagion is spread through the media.
Mental Illness Doesn’t Explain Mass Violence—but Neither Does ‘Islamic Extremism’
It’s true, as CNN’s Anderson Cooper says, that most depressed people, and people with mental illness in general, will never hurt anyone. But it’s just as true that religious beliefs–“extremist” or otherwise–don’t “lead most people to kill other people.”
Charleston Massacre Media Coverage: Recognizing the Crime, Downplaying the Causes
In lieu of pointing out the role of the US right wing and the conservative media in radicalizing Roof, corporate media preferred to pathologize him as a distraught young man, a mere product of a troubled childhood.
For Media Factcheckers, It’s ‘Mostly False’ to Say Mass Violence Is More Frequent in US
In theory, factchecking is one of the most important functions of journalism. In practice, systematic efforts by corporate media to “factcheck” political statements are often worse than useless.
