There was a shooting in our nation’s capital, but it’s not in the headlines. WTAF?!
From the Washington Post. Note that they included 20,000+ suicide deaths as a footnotes (?!), so it’s actually around 40,000 gun-related deaths a year.
Am I completely crazy to think that at one time in recent history, a shooting injuring at least 4 people just outside a MLB (pro) baseball game would have topped headlines for at least a day or two? Or that one happening in Washington, D.C. would be a hot topic of discussion for at least a couple of days?
What about both of them together — a multiple-victim shooting outside a MLB game in the nation’s capitol? That’s big news, right?
It’s not hypothetical. It happened on Saturday. Shots heard at a Washington Nationals game. Players brought back to the inside dugout for safety. Some fans let into the dugout for their protection.
Hundreds, if not thousands, fleeing a ballpark trying to get to safety after gunshots coming from no one knew where. Several people injured. All this happening just miles away from the seat of our government.
I saw it on Twitter Saturday night. So today, I went to find out more info about it. And to my surprise, it’s not top news. Not even close.
It took me a while to find this local article, from yesterday, which does a good job. Lots of details, and tweets that include videos. It turns out, it was an exchange of gunfire between two cars that injured four, including an innocent bystander.
Local media covered it in depth. What about the big names in national mainstream media?
CNN — info about the shooting is nowhere to be seen at the top of their site. There’s news about a US rioter getting prison time, which is an important story. CNN launching CNN+, probably a little less important. 23 stories at the top of their page, not one about a shooting in the capital.
Yahoo News — no sign of the shooting either. There were four people found dead at a music festival, so I understand that being top news (no one died in the DC shooting, fortunately). Is the viral, apocryphal story about beds for the Olympic Games being made to prevent athletes from having sex, more important than a shooting in Washington? A 100-pound fish? Not so sure.
The New York Times — whose slogan used to be “all the news that’s fit to print.” Apparently a shooting in the nation’s capital that resulted in a game being canceled for America’s pastime (as baseball is affectionately called by some) is less fit to print than a story about Dolly Parton. I will give them that at least from the headlines, the stories are pretty consequential, but the shootings in Washington aren’t there.
There is a baseball story further down on the page…but it’s about baseball stats only fans would care about: strikeouts going down. Maybe the shooting could have been featured instead?
Is it not bigger news because no one ending up dying (fortunately) after this shooting? Is that also why there doesn’t seem to be much talk about it on social media today?
Do I care more because I was a baseball fan as a kid, or because I’m worried about guns since my state (Tennessee) now allows open-carry without a permit needed?
Whatever the case, I said the same thing on Twitter as another tweet cited in the local ABC affiliate in DC article said: This is not normal.
And I think if we’re going to get gun reform and stop more people from being injured and dying day after day, we need to be outraged at every shooting that injures or kills innocent people, and whether or not injured or deaths from gun violence make the headlines, we need to continue the fight for gun reform.
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