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.

No they don’t. Does Jeffrey Epstein have the right to be respected? Hitler?
What a ridiculous take.

Are you consistent on this, though?

If you support stricter gun controls or better mental health support, do you decry as “frothing” people who lobby for that after yet another shooting?

Many people on this board sincerely and with a decent amount of evidence believe that the same ideology that led to this person being called female is also doing real harm, with a real body count, to real children. Not least by diverting mental health attention away from disturbed children who really need the help, possibly explaining this killing, and others perpetrated at an unusually high rate by trans-identifying teens.

In other words it’s directly relevant in a way that gun control is.

Should the gun-control-and-better-mental-health-support crew (I’m one also) just shut up with their hobby horse frothing too? Or is it only arrogant when you personally disagree with it?

People are being incredibly naive if they think it is no big deal for the media to blatantly lie about obvious facts.

The long term implications of that are staggering. Why should we believe anything they say if they'll lie about this?

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

I’d say it was pretty disrespectful to the victims for the police and global media to spread lies about a fundamental fact regarding the murderer but you go off trying to shame people into silence.

The secrecy and silencing from authorised have contributed to these attacks (remember, this boy is one of a number of shooters who identify as trans). There are clear and very specific mental health issues that need to be addressed and silencing public conversation on this only contributes and will ultimately lead to more deaths.

You reducing this down to an accusation of us being concerned with “what’s in his pants” in an attempt to silence us is very much part of the problem. Why would you want to do that?

If there a reason why you frame OPs request to a news outlet that they report the facts in this terrible tragedy clearly and honestly as ‘frothing’?

Do you have a problem with facts and honesty? Are there any other topics where you will accept blatant lies as ‘news’ or is it just this one?

Well, look at that.

”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.”

Almost word for word from another poster on a thread about posters ‘hijacking’ threads.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5489967-to-think-the-way-mn-lets-anti-trans-extremists-hijack-a-tragedy-is-pretty-despicable?reply=150515733&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

It seems rather hypocritical that some posters feel the need to comment with such judgement and prejudice on threads that they don’t agree with. As if they are ‘hijacking’ a tragedy to make their own political point while disparaging those they disagree with.

And New Zealand is a country where people are traditionally deeply skeptical and dismissive of the media anyway (unlike England, where they play a kids' version of BBC propaganda in school classrooms).

If it comes to lockdowns, escaping gunmen, health warnings, tsunami or landslide risks etc though, you want people at least somewhat paying attention to the news.