NARATIVE BIAS! Why Media Doesn't React to Minneapolis Like It Did Charleston
Two church shootings, two killers, endless media double standards
Two church shootings, two killers, endless media double standards
When the shooter fits the media’s preferred villain, headlines write themselves. When the facts get messy, the press goes quiet. Americans have noticed.
Two church shootings, a decade apart, received strikingly different treatment from America’s corporate media. The first occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. The second took place in Minneapolis just last week.
On June 18, 2015, CBS News reported:
A white man opened fire in a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina, the night of June 17, 2015, killing nine people, including a pastor, during a prayer meeting. The suspect, Dylann Roof, was arrested in North Carolina and extradited to South Carolina June 18, 2015, for what authorities are calling a hate crime.
On June 28, 2025, CBS News reported:
Two young children were killed and 18 others were injured in a shooting during a Catholic Mass packed with young students in south Minneapolis Wednesday morning. The shooter is also dead.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said the shooting triggered a massive law enforcement response to Annunciation Catholic Church at West 54th Street between Harriet and Garfield avenues around 8:30 a.m. The church is connected to a school building.
The shooter approached from the outside of the building and fired a rifle through the church windows toward children and worshippers. The shooter also used a shotgun and a pistol that he had legally purchased ‘recently,’ O’Hara said.
Both reports were written one day after the massacres. Both shooters were identified by that point. Yet the second account omitted key information about the…