Tipsheet

Oh, So That's Why CNN Doesn't Cover Shootings In Places Like Chicago

We’ve had a tragic spate of mass shooting this summer. In Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas—two crazy people decided to commit senseless acts of violence. It was used as fodder for the anti-gun crowd. The 2020 Democratic candidates tried to blame Trump for the El Paso shooting since the shooter was a white supremacist who hated Mexicans while burying the environmentalist roots of the shooter’s manifesto that’s more in line with those on the Left. The El Paso shooter also hated Republicans, but please—blame Trump. My eyes couldn’t roll any harder when that narrative was being tossed around the news cycle. 

Yet, gun violence occurs every day in blue-state America. Chicago is a prime example. Scores of people are shot and killed on a weekly basis, the holiday weekends in the Windy City especially are brutal. And yet, why no coverage? Well, it’s because the victims are usually minorities. That’s what CNN’s Christian Sierra, the network’s media coordinator told Cary Poarch, the insider who is the basis for James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas investigation into CNN’s liberal bias. 

In clips released by PV, Sierra said, “a white kid gets shot at Princeton University. He’s walking, he’s visiting his big brother who’s a student there, he gets shot in the head. He gets killed. We’re going to get coverage on that because, oh my God, we have to put the precious little white.” When Poarch asked what would happen to three kids shot in Newark, Sierra said nothing would happen, no one would care unless the shooting occurred on Cory Booker’s block. 

Sierra adds that unless 20 people are shot and killed in urban America, the network would probably take a pass:

In the second Project Veritas insider video segment covering racial bias and it’s effect on coverage at CNN, Media Coordinator Christian Sierra, states, “I think that shootings in poorer areas or, um, minority communities don’t get as much coverage as if they were to happen in a white area.”

[…]

… “I think if, unless if were looking a mass, if you’re a mass shooting like if it were like 20 people killed, they would cover it.” “But if there were like two people killed, like in a gang related violence shooting, they’re not gonna really care.”

And on top of that, cities are run by Democrats, this makes Democrats look bad, and therefore CNN would probably deep-six it. And yet, even with the spikes in violence in cities like Chicago, which has improved in their crime statistics for this year, violent crime across the country remains low, we’re safer than we’ve ever been, and schools are safer than they were during Columbine. We’re not a shooting gallery, but the insane amount of coverage CNN and other networks dole out for mass shooters makes you think we’re like the Bakara Market in Mogadishu. We’re not. But damn the facts if it means putting Trump, the GOP, and the NRA on their heels, or so that goes the logic.