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

[2021x]

I sent this email to a news outlet in NZ when reporting the recent Canadian shooter.

I would be keen to know how many people feel that I am being unreasonable.

I’m writing to seek clarification on Stuff’s editorial guidelines regarding the use of female pronouns to describe a male assailant.

I became confused when reading this article: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360937660/canada-shooting-who-was-shooter-suspect-jesse-van-rootselaar. The use of “her” pronouns, alongside a photo of a male person and references to the shooter’s mother, made it difficult to understand who the “her” in those paragraphs was referring to. Female school shooters are extremely rare and therefore, the pronoun choice stood out and created uncertainty about the factual details of the case.

My understanding is that news reporting should prioritise clarity and factual accuracy- especially for such a tragic event. Using female pronouns to describe someone who is male may suggest an ideological or political framing, which raises concerns for me about impartiality in reporting at Stuff.

I’m aware that raising questions about pronoun usage can sometimes lead to assumptions about a person’s views, resulting in my concerns being dismissed as bigoted rather than considered on their merits. 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 would appreciate clarification on the editorial reasoning behind this choice.

The that is what I will challenge next.

It does amuse me how many posters who dish out this sort of advice are here on these threads totally NOT following their own advice.

I’m sure as it has temporarily stopped raining, we will all whizz out and enjoy some spring flowers.

It doesn’t change the fact that no one has ever changed sex in the history of the world, men calling themselves women is harmful to women and it is important for news outlets to report the facts.

I’m off to check out my camellias which have just started and I’ve got some stunning jasmine perfuming the conservatory. Back later.

Simple. If you were born with a dongle and a Y chromosome, you are a man. If you were born with a vagina and two X chromosomes, you are a woman. Everything else is sophistry.

Surveys have shown that the general public are very confused by the relatively newly invented trans terminology.

There is no such thing as a male female. While treating people respectfully is important, the truth (especially in a news outlet) is even more important.

It is not respectful to women to pretend that some men are also women.

So in other words, ladies, don't worry your pretty little heads about it? Who the hell are you to lecture women on not being concerned about male appropriation exactly?

Reporting should be accurate, wherever it's from- it is more respectful to the victims who are the most important people in this. Inaccuracies cause more confusion for the rest of the reading public. As we have seen before, people are often confused between the terms 'transwoman' ie the general public asking " is this a woman identifying as a man or a man identifying as a woman?"

I do wish this confused boy had more help for his mental health. His mother tried to help but was murdered first?
This is a male person and all the obfuscating and does not help.
He wouldn't know whether you respect his pronouns or not

OP I admire your tenacity in remaining polite in the face of rudeness or dismissive and patronising replies from posters who for example, just told you to go for a walk.
FFS

Great email OP. I am in the process of writing a similar one to complain to an Irish newspaper who are still using female pronouns to describe this male shooter. My trust in mainstream media decreases every day!

This is not a woman's crime and should be reported on accurately.

@HoskinsChoice it does matter. These murders are not the crimes of a woman and should not be represented as such. I made the mistake of looking at the Wikipedia entry and throughout it refers to she and her.

Again, the Stuff reporting was very clear, very early on, and obviously isn't in the same country. Reports on the ground probably could have been better, yes. And there is a conversation to be had about pronouns, yes, sure.

However active shooter situations are notoriously chaotic and reporting is often full of inaccuracies at the start, with revisions happening later. This isn't limited to situations where the shooters are trans. I remember the Christchurch mosque shooting reports were constantly changing in the initial event and aftermath. This is normal as information does not come out ordered and neatly packaged for public consumption. One could argue reporters should be able to pull it together like that before printing, however the 24/7 news cycle that we ALL buy into and indeed demand often doesn't allow the room for this.

If you want an interesting rabbit hole to go down, look into the Columbine martyr myths that persist to this day despite all evidence to the contrary. Those stories took hold very early on, via understandable confusion and shock of eye witnesses reporting things that turned out to be impossible, and a public very willing and needing to believe in some kind of redemptive story coming from such an awful and not-yet-commonplace tragedy. When the truth came out ... people didn't care, the stories didn't change.

Accurate reporting matters. Feel free to call it out. But do it for everything, not just where pronouns are involved. Otherwise it looks an awful lot like something else. I know a number of people who will be het up about this trans shooter and "accuracy" in reporting, but will defend to the end the Columbine narrative of Christian persecution because it suits their ideas of the world.

Fair point. I was at Eastgate when the Chch mosque shootings were unfolding. My nephew went into lockdown at Linwood Primary and we all got corralled into a holding area till given clearance to collect the kid. I was privileged to hear hundreds of bits of "information" from the gathering parents, including that the mosques had declared war and were bombing KFC.

Oh gosh I forgot about the KFC thing, one of my kids came home from school with that and we're at the opposite end of the country!

I think this article from the BBC would be the standard. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czj17z7l9jmo

Sigh. BBC leading with the bodycount This old Charlie Brooker clip remain ever relevant.

”Police say Van Rootselaar was born a biological male and began transitioning to being female approximately six years ago.”

From the BBC article linked to above.

How the hell was he “transitioning to being female?” In what way did he change his chromosomes? Did his body spontaneously develop a uterus and ovaries?!

This is why the steady attack on our language is so insidious. A Trans identifying man cannot make himself ‘female.’

Maybe it’ll be possible sometime in the very far future, when somehow we’ll be able to alter our DNA at will (although I suspect humanity will have triggered an extinction level event long before we get there). Certainly not know though.

I have reviewed the answers of the responses on this thread.

A majority seems to be supportive or questioning the editorial policy of an organisation using the incorrect information when reporting the factual events. I am particularly interested in why they chosed to use gendered language rather than neutral terms like the "the shooter" or the "suspect". I can't find any reason that it would be considered disrespectful to.

The detractors have repeatedly used the words "disingenous". This has been followed up with the assertion that it was made clear that the pronoun "her" was used after the shooter was declared as trans. This is incorrect. In the article "her" was used twice before the mention of the person being male. Also some posters have tried to insinuate that I am essentially causing a fuss over nothing.

Overall a pretty good response. I have had no threats or name calling which I fully expected. There have been some attempts at mild rebukes encouraging me to take a walk... ironic as the time those messages were posted it was nighttime in NZ which would make it unsafe for a woman to do that.

I look foward to the response from Stuff, and I will follow up in a couple of days if I haven't received one. If they still do not respond within their timeframe I will escalate to the correct authority.

Its idealogical framing because only an ideology considers that men can become women. Science certainly doesnt.

Are you seriously concerned with fairness towards a mass murderer in the use of their pretend pronouns? Thats pretty idealogical too.

He

Since the overwhelming majority of mass shooters are male, it makes a difference to perception of the trend on the part of people who accept pronouns as unimpeachable fact.

There is a clear difference between deliberate disinformation repeated in print media and confusion stemming from immediacy to an event.

Stuff used words like 'confirm female suspect dead' in headlines at a time when it was already apparent the shooter was likely a male who described himself as female. They should not report in absolutes if they know there is ambiguity.

Some of us are no longer willing to live in an Orwellian landscape where "The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.'

Oh Lord. I am convinced most people who quote 1984 have never read it.

As best I can tell that information in the article released the night of the shooting, being 10.41pm on the 10th Canadian time. Not to be grim, but bodies from shootings aren't often recovered, identified and returned to their families until 1-2 days after the event. Columbine victims lay where they died or where emergency services dragged them during the shooting (those who died outside the school) for 2 days after.

Was the information known at that time? Maybe. Stuff reported what had been released by Canadian police. Keeping in mind the bodies of the victims were likely still in place in the school grounds, depending on how badly injured they were they may not have been identified yet, and this was still a very new, very shocking event with families likely still being notified within a very close knit community and one child still fighting for their life and many others injured.

This is not Orwell fgs, it's humanity. We can address the pronoun issue without blowing it out of all proportion in relation to CHILDREN LOST THEIR LIVES THAT DAY. Nothing else, and certainly not your culture war, matters as much as allowing families to bury and grieve their dead without a fecking political storm of who did what and what's in their pants, and our fecking "confusion" coming into play, like our feelings on that matter are of pre-eminent concern. There's a time and a place, now is not it. I know someone who's relative was lost at Sandy Hook. The political uproar following was absolute hell for the families. I have zero respect for anyone who doesn't give appropriate space and time before recriminations, soap boxes and arguing over who of the onlookers is the most badly injured / maligned, when at the end of the day they can still go home to their live children rather than empty beds.

It is Orwellian to pretend that men are women. You know, war is peace, ignorance is strength, that kind of thing. And you commenting on it makes it your culture war too 🤷‍♀️

Well said!

He’s a man. He wasn’t female. He wasn’t a woman. Some of us think truth matters in a world where many people are lying.

It’s the arrogance of it. The way it’s demanded that somebody’s frothing should take precedence over horrific events and grief. You need to be pretty obsessive to react like that.

Nice try. I actually believe this should be recorded as a male crime, and the reporting should identify it as such. Personally, in reading the reporting that part was crystal clear to me. So no, not involved in a war. Just increasingly disgusted with how tragic events are co-opted for various political "sides" often well before the bodies are cold. And it's so so predictable - like the needle emoji after every sudden young death, often before cause of death is then confirmed as something else entirely. It's happened several times in our community, and every time it's a kick in the gut.