Colorado Springs shooting

“Colorado Springs shooting,” Monterey Herald – Dec. 3, 2022. This is the second edition of this letter. This time the newspaper took out the question of whether the “non-binary” shooter is a “transgender.”

The media have rushed to judgment again. Their go-to stereotype of mass shooters is the gun-toting American who supposedly hates everyone. They trotted out this misguided narrative again after five people were killed at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.

The reported assumption is that the shooter — Anderson Lee Aldrich — is an anti-gay bully who is filled with hate. However, if the media had waited for the facts instead of participating in a smear campaign, they would have discovered that Aldrich lists himself as “non-binary,” and “uses they/them pronouns.”

Does this particular person hate gays and therefore feel compelled to hunt them down? Or is he a spurned lover of one of the clubs’ members? We may never know.  And this is the point. Political operatives are always trying to push society in a particular direction. In order to accomplish this ignoble mission, scores of prejudiced people have invaded and infected the media.

This is why the public no longer trusts the news. If the media want to regain some respect, they must be both patient and truthful.

— Lawrence Samuels, Carmel