Mailbag: Las Vegas Shooter Labels And Their Subtext
"Lone wolf" or "domestic terrorist"?
Sunday night's Las Vegas shooting brought a strong response from NPR's newsroom, but, as with any major breaking news story, listeners and readers had questions and complaints. Chief among them was how NPR referred to the now-dead gunman, a white man.
As has been the case with all major news-garnering attacks that involved white men in recent years, some in the NPR audience immediately insisted that NPR should be calling the event "domestic terrorism." NPR has not used that term. It did, however, repeatedly quote Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo's reference to the killer as a "lone wolf." That juxtaposition in particular drew criticism from some listeners.
On the NPR Ombudsman Facebook page, a listener named Sean McGovern set off a lively discussion with his post: "Enough with the 'lone wolf' talk. Call domestic terrorism what it is."
I NPR's reluctance to use the "domestic terrorist" label in June 2015, at the time of the at a black church in Charleston, as violence meant to intimidate or affect the behavior of civilian populations for political aims; it does not include actions that are simply racist or designed to scare people without some political intent. In addition, terrorism involves a specific category of legal charges. (That, of course, is only a secondary issue in this case, since the killer is dead.)
