An email sent to a news outlet in NZ re: Canadian Shooter

Why is it different? Unless it’s an opinion piece, surely journalism should be factual. Once a journalist starts altering facts to suit the sensibilities or preferences of the person they’re writing about, their work becomes useless.

You canvassed opinion…

Now I see you only wanted those that agreed with you, my mistake

Everyone has a right to be respected. The article retained journalistic integrity by making it clear early on in the article that the person concerned was a trans female and that’s why the pronouns being used were being used. Nobody was led to believe this was a cis woman shooter.

Why ought we?

And everyone has a right to be called whatever they want, do they?

With what consequences if someone refuses or does not agree with or respect this 'right?

I think there ought to be a trans category for collection of statistics but that we ought to respect people’s pronouns when writing articles about them in the paper which is very different

Why is it a “right” to force people to lie about your sex?

Because we should always respect the rights of others, even those who are evil, or we would live in a lawless state

Except the headline Stuff used has "shooter" and the name, not gender or sex. As far as I've seen Stuff's reporting has been very clear. Early reports overseas - well, a) there's a lot of chaos in the beginning of these events so facts are often muddled and updated later (eg death roll was revised down), and b) it sounded to me like they weren't sure where the shooter was so wanted people to be aware of someone who - at first glance - would appear to be female. If everyone was looking for a male, that female looking person might then slip the net or kill more people. That's a very brief thought from this morning, I stayed away from most reports because quite frankly I've had enough bad news for one week, and I knew the trans issue would obscure focus on the victims which will be just horrendous for the families. The absolute last thing they need is for their raw losses to be co-opted into a political firestorm right now.

Let’s say the media started reporting a big spike in crime committed by “foreigners”.

It’s the word used in the headlines, and it’s how the police refer to the suspects.

Later in the articles, it becomes clear that ‘foreigner’ is used for Canada-born citizens too, provided they are non-white or descendents of recent immigrants.

Would you think something had gone wrong?

It’s an unorthodox use of the word, being applied for an ideological reason, that gives a misleading impression. I’d object to it. Would you?

I suppose at least you were polite. I can imagine the reporter has had death threats today from the Brian Tamaki crowd, so a polite query is probably refreshing.

Ah. So you're not at all interested in any opinion other than YANBU. Got it.

Personally I have no skin in the game, I'd prefer the shooter was referred to using male pronouns, but I'm less interested in that than the view of victims families, some of whom have pleaded for people not to focus so much on the shooter. And I'm genuinely mystified as to how the article was confusing, it takes language skills at the level of my 11yr old to decode. Raise the issue of pronouns with Stuff, sure, but it seems disingenuous to express it in terms of confusion.

My intention is not to be inflammatory, but to understand why a political stance appears to have been taken in a situation where a neutral approach—such as using the individual’s name or simply “the shooter”—could have avoided confusion and not detracted from the article

I don’t really know why people have such an issue with the OP

she is asking news outlets to report correctly…..and she isn’t even saying that! She doesn’t even want them to use the correct sex. She wants them to use gender neutral language

I found the initial reports of a female shooter shocking. Then the clarification in other outlets really annoyed me further.
By all means say "male shooter identifying as female" but the whole plain "female shooter" irritated the hell out of me.

Those poor families and their children, just awful.

My daughter couldn't see the issue but for me, whilst sadly male mass shootings are common, a female one is not.
The statistics for 2025 in the US bear this out overwhelmingly.

Yanbu. A trans woman is man. You have to be a man to be trans woman. I hate this pronoun bullshit. Some of the news reports called him a female which he never was nor never could be.

Huh. I read that article this morning, thought it explained very clearly and early on that the shooter was born male, identified female. Not at all confusing.

Are you saying the same re “obsession” to those who are on here and other aspects of media who are demanding total capitulation that others believe their delusions?
why are they obsessing that others don’t do what they want?

And do we actually know that Statistics Canada will reflect his sex in their data? Or is that an assumption?

Several UK police forces, for instance, were reporting crimes against preferred gender identity until challenged. There’d be no such challenging in Canada (or none that would make any difference).

But you've made it clear you could tell. And indeed the article itself explained the situation fully. So what is the point of the letter?