Freudian Slip: Newspaper Automatically Blames “Shooter” For OSU Deaths

posted on October 28, 2015

On Saturday, a Stillwater, Okla., woman drove her car into a crowd gathered to watch the Oklahoma State University homecoming parade, killing 4 and injuring 47. The investigation is ongoing, and alcohol, drugs and untreated mental illness are being examined as possible contributing factors. 

But in their Sunday edition, the staff of Michigan’s Traverse City Record-Eagle inadvertently revealed their personal biases when they ran an article on the tragedy accompanied by the headline, “Shooter Kills 4, 30 Injured.” 

A retraction cites a “page designer’s error,” but how ingrained must the designer’s anti-Second Amendment attitudes be to see that lives were lost and immediately jump to blaming firearms? How can the editors hate guns so much (or be so lazy) that they don’t notice a headline holding firearms culpable in an incident where not a single shot was fired?

The people of Stillwater, some of whom are still fighting for their lives, deserve better than this.

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