Reporting on Nashville Tragedy is a Travesty

Mainstream media moves to protect its transgender narrative

It is both stunning and troubling how mainstream and leftist media and activists in the US have reported and commented on the horrific murders of six people–three of them children—at the Christian Covenant School, in Nashville, Tennessee. Some seemed more interested in ensuring the shooter, who Nashville police bravely and thankfully took out, before there was more carnage, wasn’t ‘misgendered’. 

It would seem that the shooter identified as transgender, but the gender they identified with wasn’t initially clear. There was some confusion because the term ‘transgender woman’ was used–which is rather nebulous as it could mean a transgender man who was identifying as a woman or vice versa. As it turned out the killer was a biological woman who identified as, and was transitioning to male  This caused a stir among the legacy media who both corrected and apologized for ‘misgendering’ the killer. The New York Times and the CNN cable news network both issued corrections after ‘misgendering’ the killer, and failing to use her preferred pronouns, saying she preferred the name ‘Aiden’ and the pronouns ‘he’ and ‘him’. Then there was Reuters who didn’t seem to think mentioning that the killer was transgender was very important, their story leading with, “The former student of a Christian grade school in Nashville who killed three 9-year-olds and three adults in a shooting spree there was under a doctor's care for an "emotional disorder" and had amassed a collection of guns.

Forget the fact that this person deliberately and brutally killed six people, three of whom were nine year old children. Forget that an entire community is in shock and that there are now grieving parents, grandparents, siblings, and spouses reeling from the tragic and senseless loss of their loved ones in such a vicious and cowardly attack. Forget that the lives of those parents who lost children will never be the same again. Forget that this maniac actually had a manifesto to explain why these murders were necessary, which has yet to be released to the public, and interestingly the mainstream media don’t seem too concerned about this, likely because it may expose a dark side of the transgender movement. A movement they have regularly promoted and supported, without question.

They, instead, decided to try and spin this horrific massacre to fit their pro-trans narrative–that it was anti-trans forces that drove this person to kill. Some tried to connect the murders to the passage of laws by the state of Tennessee which banned drag queen shows for children and ‘gender affirming’ care and surgeries for minors.

ABC News journalist Terry Moran, for example, highlighted in his reporting on the murders how Tennessee had recently, according to him, “banned transgender ‘medical care’ for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment, including male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state.” What he failed to mention was the ‘medical care’ for transgender minors included giving them harmful puberty blockers, cross-hormone treatments, and surgeries to remove the healthy breasts and genitals from, once again, minors. The controversies around drag shows that he omitted were the fact that these drag queen shows were directed at children.  

Some also tried to connect the attack on the school to the fact that the Daily Wire, a conservative leaning media company that has been openly critical of the whole transgender movement–particularly its targeting of children– is based in Nashville. This included an NBC reporter who ultimately deleted his Tweet which specifically mentioned the names of Daily Wire commentators who have spoken out against the transgender movement.

It would also seem the American media are more concerned about the safety of trans-people, fearing there may be a backlash against them because of this horrific massacre by someone who identified as trans. With NBC News reporting “Fear pervades Tennessee’s trans-community with focus on Nashville shooter’s gender identity, and quoting a trans-activist “We were already fearing for our lives. Now it’s even worse.”

Yet the only ones seemingly having guns pointed at them are those who are labelled ‘transphobes’ as Arizona Governor Katie Hobb’s Press Secretary Josselyn Berry tweeted on the meme pictured below just hours after the reports that a transgender individual had killed three 9-year olds and three adults at a Christian school. Berry has since resigned from her post as Press Secretary.

Of course both the left-wing media and the Biden government automatically went to their standard mantra about the need for more gun control, attacking the Republican party for blocking legislation that would ban assault rifles. Newsweek, for example, tweeted, "Drag shows and gender-affirming care for minors were banned in Tennessee this month, while assault weapons remain legal." 

Meanwhile, neither the Democratic run Department of Justice nor the FBI, have yet to call this attack on a Christian private school a hate crime. Despite the fact they have the killer’s  manifesto and they know, for a fact, that this was a targeted attack, by the killer’s own admission. Now, suppose if this had been an attack on a Mosque, how long do you think it would take the media and the government to designate it a hate crime? But in this case–the DoJ and the FBI are ‘still investigating’. President Joe Biden, when asked by a reporter whether or not he thought Christians were targeted in the Nashville shooting, he responded, “I have no idea.” When the reporter mentioned that Republican Senator Josh Hawley believes that they were and asked Biden what he thought of that, Biden laughingly replied, “Well I probably don’t then.” He followed up to say he was only joking.

Seriously, a sitting President making a joke about Christians being possibly targetted and killed, including three nine-year olds? Where is his humanity, his compassion?

Meanwhile, left-wing media didn't waste any time getting in some Christian bashing. David Pakman a ‘progressive’ host of the YouTube and Twitch Talk Radio program The David Pakman Show, mocked the Christian school for not praying enough. "Very surprising that there would be a mass shooting at a Christian school, given that lack of prayer is often blamed for these horrible events. Is it possible they weren't praying enough, or correctly, despite being a Christian school?" He has since deleted the tweet, perhaps because someone pointed out just how crass and how bereft of compassion it was. Gun control activist Shannon Watts also took a crack at prayer, tweeting “If prayers alone worked there wouldn’t have been a mass shooting at a school where they pray. DO YOU F–ING JOB.”

The reporting wasn’t all slanted like this, but enough of it was. While some reports did ask questions and tried to dig into the past of the shooter, the fact that so much of the media did go on the attack, try to make excuses for the shooter and indirectly blame the victims is, itself, troubling. Six people died, including children whose lives had barely begun, because someone clearly suffering from a mental illness, and perhaps amped up with testosterone, acted out on their delusions and anger. Thankfully this person was stopped by police who effectively and fearlessly did their jobs.

The six people who lost their lives were Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, all aged 9, and Mike Hill, 61, the school’s Headmaster Katherine Koonce, 60 and Cynthia Peak, 61. 

The two Nashville police officers who ended the massacre by killing the shooter were Officer Rex Englebert and Officer Michael Collazo. Their names and those of the victims are what should be remembered when we think about this tragedy.