News

NR PLUS Forgotten Fact Checks

Journalists Join Activists in Casting Covenant School Shooting as Tragedy for Trans People

By
A vehicle is towed from the property as community members pray while visiting a memorial at the school entrance after a deadly shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tenn., March 29, 2023. (Cheney Orr/Reuters)

The shooting prompted an outpouring concern for trans people, not Christian school children.

Sign in here to read more.

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we revisit the misplaced empathy that emerged after the Nashville school shooting, take a look at a Washington Post fluff piece on drag queens, and hit more media misses.

Media, Democrats Paint Covenant School Shooting as a Tragedy for Trans People

Representative Andy Ogles (R., Tenn.) was forced to note that the Covenant School Shooting in Nashville was not a “dual tragedy” after several figures and groups attempted to gin up empathy for the transgender shooter and the transgender community.

Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old female shooter who identified as transgender, opened fire at The Covenant School last week, killing three children and three adults. Hale was a former student, though the motive for the shooting was not immediately clear. The victims ranged in age from nine years old to 61 years old. The shooter appeared to have meticulously planned out the attack with detailed maps and surveillance of the premises.

Despite Hale killing three nine-year-old children and three adults, many attempted to draw attention to the suffering of the transgender community, and even the shooter, rather than the victims and their families. The Trans Resistance Network suggested in a statement last week that the attack was “not one tragedy but two.”

“The first tragedy is the loss of life of three children and adults,” the statement said. “The second and more complex tragedy is that Aiden or Audrey Hale, who felt he had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others, and by consequence, himself.”

“We do not claim to know the individual or have access to their inner thoughts and feelings. We do know that life for transgender people is very difficult, and made more difficult in the preceding months by a virtual avalanche of anti-trans legislation, and public callouts by Right Wing personalities and political figures for nothing less than the genocidal eradication of trans people from society,” the group said.

Ogles condemned the group’s comments in a statement to Fox News: “Any attempt to turn a mass murderer into a martyr is beyond disturbing. The notion that someone would try to justify this atrocity disgusts me to my core.”

“March 27, 2023, was not a dual tragedy as this radical group wrote. It was a targeted attack on children attending a Christian school, perpetrated by a hate-filled domestic terrorist. There is no place for accepting or justifying the actions of The Covenant School shooter,” he said.

But it wasn’t just the Trans Resistance Network that chose to draw focus away from the victims.

NBC News published a piece titled, “Fear pervades Tennessee’s trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter’s gender identity.”

Just days after the shooting, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the transgender community is “under attack.”

“We’re seeing more and more of these hateful bills,” Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing on Thursday. “People don’t want their freedoms to be taken. They want us to fight for their freedoms. And so it is shameful. It is disturbing. And our hearts go out to the trans community as they are under attack right now. But this is a president who has said many times before he has their backs”:

President Biden, meanwhile, issued a proclamation on “Transgender Day of Visibility” saying transgender Americans “shape our nation’s soul.”

The media also struggled with how to identify the shooter once authorities revealed Hale was a woman who identified as a man, seemingly concerned about respecting the killer’s preferred pronouns.

Nashville police chief John Drake initially described Hale as a female, then later clarified during a press conference that the shooter identified as transgender. Asked by a reporter whether the shooter identified as a trans woman or a trans man, Drake responded “trans woman,” further sowing confusion among reporters.

The New York Times then scrambled to let readers know it had misidentified the mass shooter in a tweet from earlier in the day that noted female “assailants in mass shootings in the U.S. — like the one that occurred on Monday in Nashville — are extremely rare.” The paper affixed an update saying, “There was confusion later on Monday about the gender identity of the assailant in the Nashville shooting. Officials used ‘she’ and ‘her’ to refer to the shooter, who, according to a social media post and a LinkedIn profile, appeared to identify as a man in recent months.”

CBS News newsgathering vice president Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews and standards and practices senior vice president Claudia Milne told staff not to use the term “transgender” when referring to the shooter, according to a memo obtained by the New York Post.

“The shooter’s gender identity has not been confirmed by CBS News. As such, we should avoid any mention of it as it has no known relevance to the crime. Should that change, we can and will revisit,” the memo said, advising staff to instead say, “POLICE IDENTIFIED THE SUSPECT AS A 28-YEAR-OLD AUDREY HALE, WHO THEY SHOT AND KILLED AT THE SCENE. And move on to focus on other important points of the investigation, community and solutions.”

ABC News anchor Terry Moran suggested recent legislation in Tennessee banning public drag shows and the provision of puberty-blocking hormones to minors may have been related to the attack.

“The shooter identified herself as a transgender person. The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state,” he said.

Benjamin Ryan, a freelance NBC reporter, pointed out that The Daily Wire, which has reported extensively on the fight over gender ideology, is based in Nashville.

Matt Walsh, a columnist for the Daily Wire who is known for his focus on transgender issues, canceled a planned speech last week due to what he said were threats against his family in Nashville.

Gun-control activists descended on the Tennessee State Capitol last week, with some demonstrators blocking a bathroom doorway and preventing a legislator from exiting. Local reporter Kelsey Gibbs shared and deleted a video of the protest, before reposting it to clarify that it was a “peaceful protest” despite the video showing protesters shoving law-enforcement officers.

“Students, parents and their supporters went through Capitol security to lobby for gun control in the Capitol. No one was arrested. This shoving started when THP needed to make way for lawmakers,” Gibbs wrote.

Meanwhile, Arizona governor Katie Hobbs’s press secretary, Josselyn Berry, resigned last week after posting a tweet that appeared to encourage violence towards “transphobes.”

Berry posted a tweet hours after the Tennessee shooting that featured a GIF of a woman wielding two guns alongside the caption, “Us when we see transphobes.”

Hobbs’s office later said it “does not condone violence in any form.”

It added: “This administration holds mutual respect at the forefront of how we engage with one another. The post by the Press Secretary is not reflective of the values of the administration. The Governor has received and accepted the resignation of the Press Secretary.”

The Democrat minority whip in the Wyoming House of Representatives took a similar approach, sharing an image of a person holding a gun that read “Auntie Fa says protect trans folks against fascists & bigots!”

Headline Fail of the Week

Despite the hectic news cycle last week offering more than enough topics for meaningful reportage, the Washington Post allotted resources to produce a story titled, “Tenn. drag queens feared it was their final hour — and gave it their all.”

Tennessee passed a law earlier this month that makes it illegal to host “an adult cabaret performance” in public venues or where children may be present. Cabaret performances are defined as those featuring “topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, [and] male or female impersonators who provide entertainment that appeals to a prurient interest.” Anyone who hosts or performs in a drag show in the presence of children would be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, subject to a fine of up to $2,500 and up to one year in prison under the new law. Additional violations would be escalated to a Class E felony and carry one to six years of prison time and fines up to $3,000.

The Washington Post piece glamorizes and is deeply sympathetic toward the drag queens who will be impacted by the ban, which has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

“Tonight, Yasmine Nicole will put on her black wig, a black-and-red skintight leotard and high-heeled ankle boots, then envelop herself in a scarlet satin gown. Her crystal rhinestone cuff bracelets will glimmer under the incandescent spotlights. She’ll cartwheel, somersault, handstand. Dollars will billow in the air as the loudspeakers thunder “Bounce Back,” a pop track by the British girl band Little Mix,” the story begins. “When she drops to the ground in a split, the ballroom floor will thud with the force of her dreams. Some 600 adoring souls will scream their approval, revering the skill, the dedication, the opulence.”

It continues: “How would you feel, Yasmine asks while getting ready backstage, with a dusting of makeup powder sitting atop the bridge of her nose, if you drove to work one morning, only to find out your job was illegal?”

Media Misses

  • Kevin Kruse, a professor of history at Princeton University, spread misinformation about Florida’s education curriculum. He reposted classroom materials shared by Aaron Rupar that removed references to race and racism in a lesson about famous figures such as Roberto Clemente and Rosa Parks in an alleged effort to “comply with a DeSantis policy restricting discussion of race.” However, the communications director for the state Department of Education clarified that the textbook Kruse shared is “not being considered for adoption by Florida” and added that it is “impossible to teach about Rosa Parks and other Civil Rights leaders without discussion of race” and that state law “REQUIRES instruction on racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination.”
  • Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler was once again fact-checked in recent days after he posted an analysis giving Republicans “three Pinocchios” for the “incendiary claim” that George Soros helped fund Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s campaign in 2021.”Republicans are being slippery here. Claiming Soros ‘funded’ Bragg is simply false, but many rely on the more ambiguous phrase of ‘backed,’ which is technically correct by several degrees of separation. But it’s still misleading and worthy of Three Pinocchios,” Kessler wrote. “The incendiary focus on Soros raises more difficult questions. Given the tenuous connection between Soros and Bragg, it’s a dangerous game that plays into stereotypes of rich Jewish financiers secretly controlling events.”

    Twitter added a community notes message onto the tweet explaining that “Soros donated $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, the largest individual donation it received in the 2022 election cycle, days after it endorsed Bragg for district attorney and pledged more than $1 million in spending to support his candidacy.” Kessler responded to the note saying, “Twitter trolls who posted a ‘community note’ to this tweet apparently have not read the actual fact check. Click the link and you will find that Color of Change did not spend $1 million in independent expenditures on Bragg, as people often claim.” That tweet then earned its own community note that read, “The original Community Note does not say that the Color of Change PAC spent the $1 million it originally pledged. Soros donated $1 million to the PAC days after it endorsed Bragg and pledged more than $1 million in spending to support his candidacy.”

  • The View celebrated news of former president Trump’s indictment on Friday. Co-host Ana Navarro joked that the children of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner will have “matching mugshots for both of their grandfathers,” referring to Trump and Charlie Kushner. Charlie Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison in 2005 on several charges, including tax evasion and witness tampering. He was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

You are out of free articles!

Don't miss out! Access premium content, videos, events, the National Review archives and more.

No thanks.
Login
You have 1 article remaining.
You have 2 articles remaining.
You have 3 articles remaining.
You have 4 articles remaining.
You have 5 articles remaining.
Exit mobile version