During the chaotic hours following yesterday"s shooting at YouTube headquarters, news organizations were begging law enforcement sources and interrogating witnesses for any clue or scrap of news about the shooter, their identity and their motive.
And as it so often does, this approach led to some incredibly - even offensively - inaccurate reporting. And nowhere were these violations more blatant than at CNN, which quickly started speculating that the attacker may have been involved in a "love triangle" or some other relationship following reports that the shooter was female, per the Hollywood Reporter.
One personality, CNN"s crime and justice reporter Shimon Prokupecz, speculated on The Situation Room that the motivation for the shooting was "perhaps a love triangle." Ongoing conversations centered on the possibility of the shooter reacting to a relationship gone bad.
Predictably, CNN"s coverage provoked an outrage on Twitter.
Love the @cnnbrk reporter"s conjecture, once he found out the #youtube shooter was female, that the shooting was due to a #lovetriangle. Yes, and she was probably having her period too. 😑🙄
— RogueFlynn (@rogueflynn51) April 3, 2018
Way to speculate without any basis whatsoever that the shooting was a result of a love triangle because the shooter was a woman. Fine reporting @cnn
— Allison Jagger (@ALLisONELV) April 3, 2018
CNN tees up a theory out of nowhere that the shooting must be a love triangle because the shooter was a woman.
turning on Cartoon Network
— geokaren (@geokaren) April 3, 2018
@CNN Why did the analyst jump to the #lovetriangle motive? Because shooter was woman? Seems like a sexist jump. Never heard of that motive for other mass shootings.
— Tampa Is Hot (@Tampaishot) April 3, 2018
Of course since the YouTube shooter is a woman, terms like "crime of passion" & "love triangle" are already being used. Stop spinning webs 🙄
— Colleen Nika (@colleennika) April 3, 2018
As fate would have it, the shooting had nothing to do with a "love triangle" or "domestic violence" - the latter of which was widely reported by mainstream media organizations citing anonymous law enforcement sources. They also reported that one of the victims was believed to be the shooter"s boyfriend. Police said the shooter, who was later identified as Nasim Aghdam, had no personal relationship with anybody at YouTube headquarters.
Instead, Aghdam, a prolific publisher of videos on the site, was seeking revenge on the company for censoring her.
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