Tipsheet

If These Three Words Dominate a News Presser, You Shouldn't Go on Television

I still can’t believe university officials and the police went in front of the cameras knowing nothing. If “I don’t know” is going to be your answer to the key questions that you know the media is going to ask, you'd better not hold a press conference. Over the weekend, a shooter attacked Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Its president, Christina Paxson, had that answer for numerous questions hours after the shooting. It then devolved into the human centipede of journalism. 

We still don’t have a suspect. The person of interest detained over the weekend was released hours later. There’s no security footage of this person? Brown has an $8 billion endowment. You’re telling me there are no security cameras on campus. The same goes for the surrounding areas, where some people were saying are dotted with Ring cameras. Nothing. We don’t know how the shooter got inside the building, where the suspect was supposedly targeting a class taught by a Jewish professor. We know something was yelled; given the alleged target, you can only imagine what it was. 

 The duck, dive, dip, and dodge game has turned this shooting into a shambles, and we still don’t have a suspect in custody. The shooter remains at large, and thus far, the search looks shambolic. The person of interest was also a ping-pong game. They had one, then they didn’t, then they did, and he was later released. Then the whole tangent about a second shooting, which turned out to be unfounded.  

It’s a wreck upon a wreck, and when “I don’t know” was uttered, we should’ve expected a circus. And let’s not forget that the media tried to frame the alleged weapon, a handgun, as something used by Deckard in Blade Runner because it had a laser sight. Folks, it’s not super unusual, they’re readily available, and this isn’t Star Wars.

And yes, the hunt for the shooter and any evidence is not going well at all. The latest video of the person of interest is also useless: