Media downplay Nashville shooter’s gender status

FPI / March 29, 2023

Audrey Elizabeth Hale, 28, a woman who identified as a man named Aiden, shot and killed three 9-year-olds and three staff members at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday. Police shot and killed her.

Big Media went out of its way to ignore or downplay Hale's gender status and testosterone level, instead focusing on the guns and not the shooter.

"That a tranny attacked a Christian grade school is not lost on normal people, but the people who write the news are not normal," blogger Don Surber noted. "The American media cares only about the Narrative."

The Associated Press called it “the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country that has grown increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.” It wasn't until the fifth paragraph that AP bothered telling readers the shooter was trans.

In its coverage, NBC waited until paragraph 11 to mention Hale's gender status.

In a 28-paragraph account, CNN did not mention the transsexualism of the shooter. It did say, “The shooter did not have any known history of mental illness.”

Of course, Surber added, "we are not allowed to call transsexualism a mental disorder. Lefties forced the American Psychiatric Association to stop calling it a mental disorder in 2012. Not calling transsexualism a mental disorder did not make it any saner. The damage to society is that we are forced to accept lies about gender and the like. It is part of the Left’s removal of free speech. We no longer are allowed to tell the truth."

The London Daily Mail is an outlier. It seeks American readers, not political correctness.

The paper reported: “Trans female former student, 28, armed with two assault rifles and a handgun, kills three nine-year-old kids and three staff members at Nashville private Christian school after writing manifesto and drawing maps of church campus.”

Another angle that Big Media ignored was covered by the New York Post, which noted: “The mother of the Nashville school shooter who killed six people — including three 9-year-olds — appeared to be a gun control activist who once urged friends on Facebook to sign a petition calling to keep firearms out of schools.”

After outrage from the leftists who consume their "news" over "misgendering" and using Hale's "deadname," Many in Big Media, including USA Today and The New York Times, tripped over themselves to bow to the woke mob.

"It took about four seconds after reports broke that the Covington School shooter was a biological female who thought she was a man and went by male pronouns before gender-obsessed ideologues lit up social media in furor over the media reporting the shooter was a woman," Media Research Center's Brittany Hughes noted. "Which, in all fairness to anyone who cares about facts and science, she was - but we're supposed to ignore that and respect her 'identity,' even as the bodies of her 9-year-old victims lay cold in a hospital morgue."

Hughes added: "The Nashville school shooter, whose name isn't worth mentioning, was a woman, regardless of what name she went by or what pronouns she slapped in her bio. I say 'was' because she’s dead, killed by the cops after massacring innocent 9-year-old children in a classroom. And if 'misgendering' her causes her rotting corpse to spin in its grave, all the better."

Dr. Carol Swain of Be The People News, pointed out: "Medical personnel and media should be inquiring into the testosterone levels in Ms. Hale’s body. She engaged in a violent act normally associated with biological males. #AudreyEHale The guilty party is the anti-science left who perpetuates the lie that people can change their biological sex. The lie is designed to deter people suffering from #GenderDysphoria from getting professional help from a therapist that will help them with the problem."

Conservative commentator Jack Posobiec noted the silence from U.S. Christian leadership in the wake of the Nashville massacre:

"A transgender woman just walked into a Christian school in Nashville and started shooting children….. This occurred just 3 weeks after Tennessee banned transgender procedures for children. The trans shooter left a manifest not a suicide note and it isn’t hard to infer the message intended …. ‘You mess with our kids, we kill your kids’ …. Textbook act of domestic terrorism.

"Why aren’t any Christian leaders speaking out about this attack? …. Where’s all those ‘celebrity priests’ at when a school full of Christian kids gets shot up in Tennessee? A Christian massacre occurred yesterday in Nashville with 6 martyrs, including 3 children, and American Christian leaders are silent."

Nashville's chief of police told NBC News he felt a sense of “resentment” might have played a role in Hale’s attack on the private Christian school she once attended.

“There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school,” Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told Lester Holt of NBC News.

Hale had carefully planned the attack with detailed maps and surveillance, police said.

The six victims included Hallie Scruggs, the 9-year-old daughter of Chad Scruggs, the senior pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church, the church confirmed to CBS News.

Evelyn Dieckhaus and William Kinney, both 9, were killed in the gunfire.

Three adult staffers were also killed: custodian Mike Hill and substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, both 61, and school head Katherine Koonce, 60.

The massacre should be investigated as a hate crime, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said Tuesday.

"We should be clear about what happened in Nashville. Police say the shooting was ‘targeted,’ " the Republican lawmaker tweeted. "That makes it a federal hate crime - against Christian children and teachers. Targeting victims on the basis of religious affiliation is a hate crime. It should be investigated as such."

"All federal resources necessary should be brought to bear," Hawley added in a follow-up tweet. "And those individuals or groups who have spread a message of hate against the Christian community - which resulted here in horrific violence - should be held to account."

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