Legacy media is covering up for transgender murderers

Within hours of the third-worst mass shooting in Canadian history, the mainstream legacy media has once again gone to great lengths to cover up the real identity of the shooter.

On February 10, residents of Tumbler Ridge, a remote town in British Columbia, Canada were left reeling from a shooting spree that left 9 dead and 27 wounded. Judging by the screaming headlines and stories that followed the attack, the majority of readers would certainly believe that a female shooter was responsible for the carnage.

The New York Times, in its early coverage of the massacre, would only describe the killer as a “female in a dress with brown hair.” While the Grey Lady was playing it safe, not revealing details until all of the facts were known, later reporting reserved just a single line to acknowledge that the killer, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, was “born as a biological male and chose to identify as a female.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press completely and unforgivably failed to mention the fact that Rootselaar was a biological male. In its description of the killer, AP would only say that “she was an 18-year-old who had a history of police visits to her home to check on her mental health…”

That is a critical omission, since millions of people depend on the AP for their daily news consumption. News stories collected by the agency are published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters. Founded in 1846, the AP attracts more than 128 million monthly website visits, making it one of the top 10 news websites in the US.

Meanwhile, Reuters performed only marginally better, informing its readers that the shooter was “born male but began identifying as a female six years ago.” However, that information was buried more than halfway down in the story, thus guaranteeing that only the most ardent readers would discover that crucial detail.

One thing all of the mainstream stories had in common is that the headlines declared the killer to be “female” as opposed to “trans”.

This brings us to the elephant in the room: Why does the media downplay the fact that an increasing number of shocking attacks being carried out today are by people who identify as “trans”? Unless you’ve been getting all of your information from the left-leaning mainstream media, you’ll know that the tragedy in British Columbia was not some aberration.

On March 27, 2023 in Nashville, transgender person Aiden Hale, 28, killed three nine‑year‑old children and three adults before being shot and killed by police officers. CNN, in a lengthy article on the shooting, only briefly mentions that Hale was “transgender” deep in the story.

On August 27, 2025 in Minneapolis, Robin Westman, formerly known as Robert Westman, opened fire through the stained-glass windows of a church at Annunciation Catholic School, killing two children and wounding 17. Once again, AP, The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the liberal media reported in passing that Westman identified as a woman.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, the alleged murderer of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, had transgender associations and beliefs. Not surprisingly, information on Robinson and his ongoing court case has practically vanished from the news cycle.

Just this week, transgender father Robert Dorgan, who also went by the name Roberta Esposito, was identified as the Rhode Island hockey shooter who gunned down his family during a game.

Given the low number of individuals who actually identify as transgender, the number of killings carried out by this miniscule group seems disproportionate and deserves some serious attention. Yet the mainstream media would prefer to treat its readers like children. Every time a violent event takes place involving a transgender person, it pulls the wool over our eyes and polices pronouns in a desperate attempt to control the narrative and make people stop asking questions.

Does the mainstream media have a duty to have a serious conversation with its readers about the biological makeup of suspected killers, with the same sort of enthusiasm it has when slamming gun rights? It seems to be the appropriate time to begin speaking about mental illness. After all, can we say with absolute certainty that believing oneself to be the opposite sex is truly a harmless behavior, or does it point to deeper psychological issues?

Whatever the case may be, we have come to the point in history when it is considered acceptable for young adults to pump their bodies full of hormone blockers and psychiatric drugs, and force scrupulous doctors out of business when they question such practices. Anyone who questions the procedures is outright deemed a bigot. None of that can be described as remotely sane or normal.

At the same time, the media regularly describes these impressionable transgender youths as victims in a world that is pitted against them. In a world dominated by social media, this is exactly the sort of programming that will cause them to seek attention and ‘15 minutes of fame’ by becoming transgender in the first place. It may even provoke a handful to strike back at their supposed ‘tormentors’, thus causing the death of more innocents.

This does not mean that every person suffering from gender dysphoria is a time bomb waiting to go off, of course. Nevertheless, we need to be honest with ourselves and speak out on the early warning signs of mental illness. To that end, the mainstream media must stop pretending that there is nothing to learn from an individual’s professed sexual self-identification. It could literally mean – as yet another stricken community has tragically learned – the difference between life and death.