CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – There’s been a discussion in the WSAU newsroom about the Nashville school shooter’s manifesto. It leaked on Monday. Someone took pictures of several pages of Audrey Hale’s notebooks and shared them.
Should that be part of the day’s news coverage?
Absolutely. The ‘why’ question of the shooting of six people at the Covenant School has never been answered. And this is a case where the public’s right to know far outweighs any right to privacy for the shooter’s and victims’ families. In my journalistic judgment, it’s not even close. So long as the photographs of the manifesto are authentic – and they are – it’s a legitimate news story.
Unfortunately, many social media sites shut down the sharing of that story. Facebook, for instance, doesn’t allow the sharing of leaked or illegally obtained information. That policy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. For better or worse, leaked information – or facts from confidential sources – are a part of journalism. Under the ‘no leaked information’ rule, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate would never have come to light.
That the manifesto upends a liberal narrative about the LGBTQ community is irrelevant. We are told that those who are trans are victims, largely treated unfairly by society. What the manifesto shows is that some – hopefully a tiny fraction of those who are LGBTQ – are ready to assert acceptance at the point of a gun. That the price for you or me not playing along with Audrey Hale’s charade, that she’s not a man, should, in her mind, cost us our lives. Just like Hale has a right to dress as a tomboy and deny her authentic gender, I have the right to see a man with a beard wearing a dress and saying that I choose not to participate in the charade. And making that choice shouldn’t put me on a hit list.
Chris Conley
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