The Journal's sloppiness and inconsistency isn't even funny anymore
A broadsheet-style outlet read by one-sixth of Irish people ought to have higher standards
I have some longer posts in the pipeline, but a recent article in The Journal really got on my nerves so I want to get a quick post up about it while the iron’s still hot.
By now I’m sure you’ve all heard about the horrific mass shooting which took place in Nashville yesterday, in which a 28-year-old shooter entered their former primary school and killed six people, including three nine-year-old pupils. This shooting earns the rare distinction of having been committed by a female person, unlike the overwhelming majority of mass shootings. However, according to Nashville metropolitan police chief John Drake, the shooter uses he/him pronouns and goes by the name “Audrey/Aiden Hale” (“Audrey” is his birth name).1
How does The Journal report on this?
Not only do they not identify the shooter by name - they can’t even keep their story straight on the shooter’s gender from the headline to the URL!
Which one is it? Are we supposed to respect how trans people identify themselves and respect their preferred pronouns and gender? Or are only trans people who haven’t done something heinous (e.g. Elliot Page) afforded that courtesy?
Two hours ago, they published a second article in which headline and URL agree that the shooting was committed by a “former pupil” whose sex is not specified. This article does identify the shooter by name, but makes no mention of his gender identity and avoids referring to him by any pronouns at all.
To quote a commenter on the first article:
So when a trans-identified male threatens to, for instance, torture, rape and kill his mother2, its reported by the media as a woman’s crime and the perpetrator referred to as she. But when a trans-identified female commits a crime… its reported as a woman’s crime and the perpetrator is MiSgEnDeReD throughout.
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
See this screenshot from Hale’s LinkedIn profile.
I presume alluding to the recent case of Barbie Kardashian, a trans woman incarcerated in Limerick Prison.