The WSJ carelessly spread anti-trans misinformation
While I generally respect The Wall Street Journal, every once in a while it sees fit to remind me that it is, in fact, owned by Rupert Murdoch. This time, it printed something dangerously close to anti-trans blood libel in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s shooting.
In its live-update blog yesterday, the Journal wrote, “Ammunition engraved with transgender and antifascist ideology was found inside the rifle authorities believe was used in Kirk’s shooting, according to an internal law enforcement bulletin and a source familiar with the investigation.” That language was echoed in social media posts.
The right wing, including sitting members of Congress, has been making false claims blaming trans people for gun violence for years
We know now that the Journal royally fucked this up — the bullets did have messages, but nothing about transgender people was on them. This reporting was demolished slowly and then quickly. First, The New York Times had a source who said the WSJ’s information contradicts other conclusions. Then, CNN reported that investigators just saw some arrows on the casings. The final nail in the coffin came from a press conference held by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who did not confirm that anything about trans people appeared on the casings.
The right wing, including sitting members of Congress, has been making false claims blaming trans people for gun violence for years. “Another trans shooter,” said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of a mass shooting in Philadelphia in 2023. (The suspect arrested was not trans.) Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said of a 2024 Texas church shooting, “So the Lakewood church shooter was a transgender, pro-Palestine radical…” (The suspect arrested wasn’t.) At least Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar had the basic sense of shame needed to delete his 2022 tweet about the Uvalde school shooting in which he blamed “a transsexual leftist illegal alien.” (Again, the suspected perpetrator was not trans.)
After Kirk’s death, the right wing loudly began blaming leftists for the shooting — everyone from Donald Trump to Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna to Elon Musk. Journalists have known for decades now that initial reports on shootings are often wrong. So given the history of false accusations against trans people and leftists, the Journal’s decision to go live with shaky information was staggeringly, shockingly irresponsible.
Trans people have been under attack from the right for the better part of a decade. Republicans now consider terrorizing trans people to be a signature issue. Besides bathroom bills — which seem aimed at criminalizing being trans in public — the Republican Party has spent valuable time at its national convention demonizing trans people specifically. Trans people’s access to healthcare has been curtailed by the Supreme Court. The University of Michigan’s hospital network stopped providing gender-affirming care to minors after receiving a subpoena; it is one of at least 21 hospitals to do so. The Federal Trade Commission has also begun an investigation into care for minors.
Why did the WSJ run with its half-baked report?
So this is a vulnerable minority group that has been widely demonized. Any good journalistic practice would involve nailing down accuracy to avoid making things worse. That did not happen at The Wall Street Journal.
This story was later rewritten without a correction or editor’s note, according to Status, a newsletter about the media industry. Status asked why. Here’s the response from the WSJ:
Like any breaking news situation, we update our reporting—which we published in the form of a live blog—with new information and further reporting as it becomes available. Our initial report about the internal bulletin was appropriately attributed. We built it out later in the day as we got more reporting, and felt that the added material spoke for itself. There was no correction added to that original story because none was deemed necessary.
Well, an editor’s note has been added now. Here it is in full:
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article detailed how an internal law enforcement bulletin said that ammunition recovered following the Charlie Kirk shooting was engraved with expressions of “transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” Justice Department officials later urged caution about the bulletin by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, saying it may not accurately reflect the messages on the ammunition, and the article was updated Thursday to reflect that. This editor’s note was appended on Friday, Sept. 12, after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said the engravings included one that said “Hey fascist!” along with other messages and symbols. He gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references.
I still have questions about how this happened. Why did the WSJ run with its half-baked report?
I suspect that someone saw a post by Steven Crowder and felt competitive. In a post yesterday, Crowder said he’d received an email from an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officer containing “a screen shot from what appears to be an internal message,” he wrote. The purported message contained the following sentence: “All cartridges have engraved wording on them, expressing transgender and anti-fascist ideology.” Crowder, a professional dickhead, is not exactly a reliable source — he’s a former child actor best known for beefing with his then-employer Fox News, chewing out his pregnant wife, violating YouTube’s hate speech policies, and hosting the political commentary program Louder with Crowder.
Blaming trans people is, after all, the Republican party line, and who promotes the party line better than News Corp?
Shortly after Crowder’s post, the Journal went live with its update. Viewing Crowder as a competitor worth matching is the sort of thing I’d expect out of the New York Post, or indeed most other sensationalist papers owned by Murdoch, who is also responsible for Fox News. (You’d think after The New York Times’ attempt to compete with Chris Rufo backfired spectacularly, leading them to serve as the mouthpiece for a Nazi hacker, serious media would know better.) Blaming trans people is, after all, the Republican party line, and who promotes the party line better than News Corp? But the Journal is supposed to be the crown jewel in the empire, with real, respectable reporting. Its editors and reporters should know better. The Wall Street Journal ran with its wrong report in an environment where the left was being vociferously blamed for the shooting, and where trans people had persistently been smeared for shootings they did not commit.
As we know now, the bullets actually did have messages on them. They included a furry meme (“Notices bulges OWO what’s this?”), the phrase “If you read this, you are gay lmao,” and a reference to the video game Helldivers 2. This seems more indicative of internet brain rot than any specific ideology. It’s confusing enough that at least some of the groypers (and also, apparently, Musk’s chatbot Grok) seem to think the shooter was a groyper, so make of that what you will. The Journal has pivoted into suggesting the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, was simply a troubled young man, despite other remarks from Cox. Cox said that one of Robinson’s relatives informed investigators that Robinson “had become more political in recent years.”
The Wall Street Journal has not retracted its report about the trans community, nor has it apologized. I guess it really is a Rupert Murdoch paper after all.
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