Media Influence On Charleston Shootings

Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old murderer of nine, was arrested for his crimes in June. According to many Roof was just a very confused and mentally ill young man, but surprisingly he was completely sane when he committed these murders. When asked about his reasoning behind his actions, Roof had this to say, “The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case... this prompted me to type in the words ‘black on White crime’ into Google, and I have never been the same since that day. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal black on White murders...At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up the Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of

The shooting in Charleston was immediately labeled as a hate crime. However, it seems appropriate to recognize this attack as terrorism too. If Dylann were a Muslim American instead of a Caucasian, who had murdered nine people during a church event, the news outlets would report the story with the term “terrorism” rather then “hate crime”. It is a matter of perspective when it comes to touchy subjects such as the Charleston shooting.

The 2006 Duke Lacrosse Case brought to light many of the issues and divisions currently plaguing our media sphere. This terrible act of injustice, which blamed three innocent Duke lacrosse players, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans, for the rape of an African-American stripper, garnered extensive media attention that gripped America for almost an entire year (Wasserman, 3). Today, many scrutinze the media’s methods of covering the case, and deem that certain codes of ethics were not adhered to. Rather than remaining neutral, newspapers and TV outlets allowed themselves to “be used” by Mike Nifong, the former District Attorney for Durham and prosecutor of the case, by reporting

Dylann Roof, killer of nine innocent people, was taken into custody two weeks ago Thursday morning. Some would say God forgives him, and some would like to strike back. Dylann walked into a bible study and shot three men and six women, in order to start a ‘race war’. It was his belief that white people should stand with their own, and war against other colors.

It’s difficult to believe that two high school students could enter their school and begin firing on classmates, but that’s exactly what happened at Columbine. The country was riveted by the news that something so evil could happen by two of their own. Columbine High School, located in Littleton, Colorado, had an enrollment of 1,136 in April 1999. Eric Harris (seventeen) and Dylan Klebold (eighteen) entered Columbine High School on April 19, 1999, at approximately 11:19 AM and began shooting. Due to Klebold and Harris being bullied, the two boys planned an attack to shoot students and staff.

The news making the headlines this past couple of days is the genuinely shocking unforeseen improvement of six ladies and three men including a minister who were shot dead at 9 p.m. on Wednesday June 17, 2015 at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston South Carolina , a chronicled church which was developed in 1816 as a standout amongst the most settled African-American holy places in the United States. The shooter 21-year-old Dylan Roof went to a Bible study meeting at the gathering. He sat there for 60 minutes and toward the end opened fire and let them know "I need to do it". "You assaulted our women and you're expecting control over our country and you have to go". According to witnesses, Roof stacked and reloaded his weapon five times. He spared one woman clearly especially prompting her "I'm not going to shoot you in light of the fact that I require you to tell everyone what happened". There were three people inside and out who survived including a five-year-old young woman whose grandmother prompted her to play dead and that is the methods by which she survived. Rooftop was caught just two or three hours former after a report of a suspicious vehicle and was represented to be useful with the officers who ended him. (Bankoff and Hartmann).

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old man murdered nine people at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. (Corasaniti, Perez-Pena, & Alvarez, 2015). Before June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof was a person filled with hate towards African American individuals in the United States. When the news came out about these murders initially, no one could understand why he had done this assuming he had a mental health condition. In the accounts of the event Ms. Washington recounted, “ You don’t have to do this.” Rooff replied,” Yes, You are raping our women and taking over the country.” (Corasaniti et al., 2015). Roof said,” The people were so friendly to me I thought about not shooting them.” It was learned that “Dylan Roof had posted a white

A second case that was a great tragedy was the Charleston church shooting. On June 17, during a church service in Charleston, South Carolina nine people were killed by Domestic terrorist Dylan Roof a 21 year old white supremacist. Three more were wounded but had survived. They arrested Roof the morning after in North Carolina and he confessed to the shooting in hopes of igniting the race war. Roof had targeted one of the oldest African American church. Roof was convicted with 33 federal hate crime and murder charges in December 2016 and in January he was sentenced to

Major events have crafted the United States and other nations into what they are today. Going from world wars in the 1940’s, to civil rights movements in the 1960’s, to extravagant national debt today, have all played a part in shaping our nation. Being from rural Mississippi, world news being made here is uncommon. We see all of our major news from televisions or newspapers, and this “news” is all happening elsewhere, far from here. Whether it is a good thing that we do not make the big news or not, the fear of uncertain events still lingers. From shootings in schools to bombings in cities, we are fortunate for being seemingly far from these dangers. Even though no physical effects pertain to me, mental pain and fear stays and leaves doubt

Indisputably, a great tragedy was inflicted upon the people of Charleston, South Carolina. Indisputably, nine innocent people were murdered in a prayer service on the evening of June 17, 2015. The suspected perpetrator of this massacre is twenty-one year old, and South Carolina native, Dylan Roof. A website was discovered that contained 60 images depicting Roof committing such acts as burning and spitting on American flags, waving confederate flags, and posing with guns. Also, on this website

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, the writer of the article “The Double Standard in How the Media is Portraying the Las Vegas Shooter,” is anti-racial profiling. Her article claims that white killers are humanized. The mass shooter of the recent mass shooting, Stephen Paddock, is white who the media seemed to include some personal likes of Paddock. Ruiz-Grossman states that if Stephen Paddock were black or muslim, then he would be immediately labeled a terrorists, and only a terrorists. Ruiz-Grossman writes, “When it comes to mass violence by white people, news outlets have repeatedly been criticized for their slowness to label attacks by white perpetrators as “terrorism,” while they’re more likely to use the label when attackers are perceived as nonwhite - and specifically, Muslim” (Ruiz-Grossman, 24). Ruiz-Grossman also states that the reason why white perpetrators are not labeled as terrorists is because of the president. Trump has called Paddock a “crazed lunatic,” not a terrorists. Brent Staples, a victim of racial profiling, tells his story about how he goes on about his life with someone constantly watching over his shoulder. He talks about being mistaken for a burglar, about being judged for the way he dresses, about being seen as a criminal, etcetera.

Media coverage of news events can be disseminated to the general public in any number of different ways and media biases often “reflects certain organizational and/or professional preferences or values” (Bennett 2011, 173). In fact, Lundman (2003) points out “that journalists assess the newsworthiness of homicides occurrences using the relative frequency of particular types of murders and how well specific murder occurrences mesh with stereotypical race and gender typifications (357).” In addition, Johnson (2012) felt that the real job of media was to “create a message that…grabs public attention (62).” In other words, can the media grab the public’s attention and hold it?

A current most spoken issue among the public media is gun violence or mass shooting however the crime is not as many as it was twenty years ago. The term mass shooting does not have an official set of definition yet, but the term indicates crime which is killing as many people as possible in a short time frame. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines it as “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” (Sam Brock, Rachel Witte, and Joe Rojas). A mass shooting can begin due to several reasons: it could be background history, media, despair, or something else. Nico Lang, the author of America’s White Masculinity Complex and The Myth of The “Senseless” Mass Shooting says, mass shooting can also be related to mental “functions like the specter of ‘mental illness.’” A number of mass shooters have serious, often undiagnosed mental problems. Are the mass media addressing the basic issue clearly? Of course, the media address the issue more than the violence expects to be addressed, but it is not overt enough. ….. By examining a variety of news media coverage on the subject of mass shooting, this essay concludes that when choosing stories to cover, the news media must take the general audience into consideration. Ultimately, what is at stake here is the media exaggerate the crime and report it disproportionally, and the distortion of reality can have variety of effects on the viewer or the general audience.

On January 7, 2015 at approximately 12 PM, brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi executed a premeditated shooting on the employees of Paris-based satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Within a span of a few minutes, the brothers had shot and killed eleven people as well as having injured eleven others. Once the attack on the cartoonists had been concluded, the brothers fled the facility and killed an officer while escaping to a stolen vehicle. The brothers identified themselves as having been belonged to the Yemen branch of Al-Qaeda. France quickly raised its terror alert and sent soldiers on a massive manhunt for the brothers. Soon after, on January 9, the men were discovered in a printing facility and exchanged bullets with police officers

I remember back when the Charleston shooting occurred feeling so angry and disillusioned at the messages being put forth by the right-wing. Despite all the signs that indicated that the act was carried out by a white supremacist, the media refused to call it a racist attack. I remember watching a clip of Fox News pundits ignorantly trying to explain away the obvious racism by bringing up mental health and other issues. Despite the fact that the shooter had ties with white supremacist organisations, had racist tattoos and attire – it had absolutely nothing to do with racism (apparently.)