![]() ![]() “There was such caution in media coverage of Charlottesville. Pervez added that, while more research is needed, similar patterns emerged when a white supremacist allegedly rammed his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, leaving one woman dead and several more wounded. And a bit more subjective when it comes to Mateen.” It’s far more objective when it comes to Roof. “With Roof, it’s more of a discussion of ‘is this terrorism?’” he said. Journalists typically pointed to Mateen’s relatively weak connection to an existing hate structure (ISIS), Pervez said, but were far more hesitant to do the same with Roof-despite his vocal white supremacist beliefs. Coverage of Mateen, by contrast, often included broader terms such as “terrorism,” “extremism,” or “radicalization.” Pervez said that in Roof’s case, media outlets tended to focus on the more “explanatory” details of the attack, spilling most of their ink parsing the precise details of what occurred. “Lawyers use ordinary charges instead of terrorism is because they’re easier to prove,” LaFree said.Ī graph highlighting the difference between coverage of Dylann Roof vs. LaFree noted that prosecutors are more likely to get results using other legal strategies e.g., the statutes used to convict Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh (mass murder) and Charleston shooter Dylann Roof (hate crimes and murder). This is partly because concrete laws outlining the actual penalties for crimes defined as domestic terrorism often don’t exist. system for terrorism, or what many people would classify as terrorism, have instead been convicted of homicide or money laundering and some other violation.” system for terrorism, or what many people would classify as terrorism, have instead been convicted of homicide or money laundering or some other violation.” “I’m not even sure there’s entire agreement within the government on. “I think it’s the case that people are never charged with ,” Gary LaFree, the director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland, told ThinkProgress. In fact, a new wave of scholarly research suggests the media and Americans at large have wildly different responses to a mass killing depending on the perpetrator’s race, religion, and methods. “For the Las Vegas shooting, we should not be labeling it as terrorism at this time without more information.”īut Kearns also noted that while this standard “should be applied to all attacks regardless of the perpetrator’s identity,” that’s rarely how things play out in practice. ![]() “The essential thing needed to call an attack terrorism is that it needs to have a political motive,” she said. Erin Kearns, a terrorist expert and professor of criminology at the University of Alabama, said this is likely the right approach. As many observers on social media pointed out with deep frustration, law enforcement negated the possibility that the shooter is a “terrorist” with alarming speed - especially when compared to other recent attacks in which the suspected perpetrator was a Muslim or a person of color.Īuthorities have thus far held firm in their assessment that there isn’t enough evidence to label suspected shooter Stephen Paddock a terrorist in the literal sense, dismissing claims by extremist group ISIS that the shooter was acting on their accord. By many metrics, Monday’s horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada - which left nearly 60 people dead and hundreds wounded - followed the agonizingly familiar patterns of America’s endless string of mass shootings.
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