A damaged vehicle sits at the site of a deadly collision near a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas, on Sunday, May 7, 2023. (Brian Svendsen/NewsNation/KVEO-TV via AP)

By Lee Williams 

A large group of unsuspecting people was waiting at a bus stop in Brownsville, Texas around 8:30 a.m. Sunday, when a Land Rover suddenly blew through a red light and barreled straight into their midst at a high rate of speed. The bus stop was located outside of the Ozoman Center, which provides care for the city’s burgeoning migrant community.

Eighteen people where hit, six were killed instantly and two died later. Police said the driver, 34-year-old George Alvarez, has an extensive criminal record. A police spokesman described him as “uncooperative,” adding that he tried to flee the scene and gave investigators several fake names. Alvarez is facing eight counts of manslaughter and 10 counts of aggravated assault with a weapon. More charges are likely. The carnage he allegedly caused was the worst some officers had ever seen. 

The story is already disappearing from legacy media newscasts and websites. There were no protests, marches or calls to ban Range Rovers or other SUVs. No one filed suit against Land Rover or organized a boycott. No one from the White House went blood-dancing at the scene. The 24-7 coverage that normally follows a mass killing involving a firearm never materialized, because as horrific as it was, the Brownsville killings did not fit the legacy media’s mass-murder narrative, for several reasons. 

There are several factors the legacy media considers before deciding how to cover a mass murder. Here are the main considerations.  

Race 

Black lives do not matter to the legacy media, at least not as much. White victims always receive more media coverage than a killing spree where the victims are people of color. The race of the murderer matters, too. A white shooter will always generate more coverage than a Black, Asian or Hispanic shooter.

Poster boards regarding George Alvarez stand during a news conference on Monday, May 8, 2023, in Brownsville, Texas. The driver of an SUV that crashed into a crowd of people at a bus stop in Brownsville, killing eight, has been charged with manslaughter, police said Monday.  (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

Downplaying or ignoring killings in a minority community is racist, but this is the type of racism the media allows. No one gets cancelled for what they don’t cover. Unfortunately, this type of racism allows the killings to continue unabated, since without media pressure elected officials know they can simply ignore the problem and hope it somehow goes away. 

Weapon 

If an AR or AK is used in a mass murder, the legacy media has prewritten stories ready and waiting to add to their coverage. These stories usually involve interviews with biased “experts” as well as anti-gun advocates. The media wants you to believe that “assault weapons” are responsible for most firearm murders, even though the data proves otherwise. 

According to the FBI’s UCR crime reports, there were 10,258 firearm homicides in 2019, but only 364 involved rifles – all types of rifles. The FBI neither defines nor maintains a specific data set for “assault rifles.” The majority of the firearm homicides, 6,368, involved handguns. Knives or other cutting instruments were responsible for 1,476 homicides that year. 

Motive 

Today’s cable TV news actors love to speculate about a mass-murderer’s motive, as if someone who walks into a classroom or a shopping mall and starts shooting innocent people has a legitimate reason for their killings. Their actual motive is simple: they’re crazy. They’re deranged. They are extremely mentally ill.

Brownsville, Texas, Fire Department firefighters hose off blood from a deadly scene after the driver of a Range Rover struck a group of migrants, killing at least seven, Sunday, May 7, 2023, along North Minnesota Avenue across from Ozanam Center, a migrant and homeless shelter in Brownsville, Texas. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald via AP)

It doesn’t matter if mommy and daddy didn’t give them enough love and attention, or if they were bullied as a child. There is no justification for shooting innocent people. Nothing in their background can excuse such horrific acts, but this doesn’t stop the legacy media from endlessly speculating about the “real reason” behind the deaths. 

Politics 

I worked in five newsrooms during my 20 years as an investigative reporter and editor and met scores of journalists from other organizations. I don’t need all the fingers on one hand to count the conservatives, and only two of these were gun owners. Today’s journalists may not be able to articulate the difference between a shotgun and a rifle, but they all have a firm grasp of politics – especially leftist politics. They would never violate the left’s unwritten rule: Guns are bad. They would never stray outside the accepted political narrative; much write a story that a shooting was justified. There are thousands of justifiable defensive gun usages every year. How many have you seen covered by the legacy media? 

Gender 

When a mass-murderer is male, the media usually tries and convicts them in the court of public opinion – justifiably so, most of the time. Nowadays, when a shooter is female or their gender identity is unclear, the coverage is much less accusatory. Sometimes it’s even sympathetic. After Audrey Hale killed six people in Nashville’s Covenant School and her gender identity became known, NBC News “pointed to an already combustible political environment in which transgender people have become a frequent target of right-wing lawmakers and pundits.” Keep in mind three of Hale’s victims were nine-year-olds. 

Definition 

CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and even the Washington Post now rely solely on mass-shooting data from the Gun Violence Archive – an anti-gun nonprofit we debunked years ago. The reason is simple. The GVA inflates body counts, so its overblown numbers have become the data set of choice for the legacy media, which is constantly seeking more sensational headlines and news stories.

fake news
Bigstock

How does the GVA get its inflated numbers? They created their own definition of a mass shooting, of course. When most Americans hear the term, they picture a madman stalking the halls of a school or a shopping mall, coldly murdering innocent victims. What does not come to mind are rival drug crews shooting it out in Chicago, a deranged husband murdering his entire family, or a law-abiding gun owner acting in self-defense.

Yet for the GVA, and by extension the legacy media, anytime four or more people are killed or even slightly wounded with a firearm, it’s labeled a mass shooting. For example, according to the FBI and its more conservative definition, there were 30 mass shootings in 2019. The GVA claims there were 417.

Proof

If you still don’t believe the legacy media’s coverage of mass murders is flawed and extremely biased, just look at the never-ending carnage in Chicago or any other large metro historically controlled by Democrats. 

In Chicago this year, 852 people have been shot and 172 have been killed – and it’s only May. Just last week, 60 Chicagoans were shot and six died as a result. That’s more than the equivalent of one mass-shooting every week, but where is the news coverage? Where is the White House spokeswoman? Why isn’t she denouncing these killings? Where are the interviews with Giffords, Brady or Demanding Moms? Why aren’t they claiming that the guns locked in our safes are somehow responsible for the Chicago deaths?

Where are the so-called gun experts at the ATF? Why aren’t they blaming Chicago’s killings on bumpstocks, pistol braces, after-market triggers or some other innocuous plastic accessory in common use? Where are the elected officials? Why aren’t they leading demonstrations, protests or marches to bring awareness to the killings? 

Bottom line, today’s legacy journalists are nothing but hypocrites. If a mass-murder fits their narrative, they will cover it ad nauseum for weeks or even months. If it doesn’t meet their specific criteria, they might mention it occurred, maybe, but only if no one is likely to become offended. 

32 COMMENTS

  1. Selective outrage = ignore what doesn’t promote your agenda. Strange how that works, ain’t it.

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  2. RE: “When a mass-murderer is male, the media usually tries and convicts them in the court of public opinion – justifiably so,”

    The entire article is reason why Gun Control needs to be tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. To do that Gun Control must be Defined by its History Confirmed Roots in Racism and Genocide.

    Like this vid LKB, state, cato et al…
    https://youtu.be/WlItbl9SOAg

    Questions, complaints, spins, etc…Contact Chip Roy.

    • Chip Roy doesn’t post on TTAG — or does he?

      Coincidentally — has Roy introduced or co-sponsored any gun-rights legislation in this session of the House?

    • The reason Nazis were able to disarm the German population (The same in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, etc.) was because there was no belief in the God given right to self protection or a Constitution that guaranteed people the RTKABA. Not a right given by the government, but a human right not recognized outside the United States.

      Chip Roy mentions slavery and how gun laws discriminated against blacks.
      And yet at no time does he say Americans have gun rights because of genocide in other countries, or the past history of slavery in the U.S. He says Americans have gun rights because they are endowed by God and enumerated in the Constitution. He rightly points out the danger of infringing on 2A rights.

      Courts will judge future attempts at gun control based on the Constitution, not what Hitler, Mao, or Stalin did decades ago.

      • Cato, the fact is that the Not Zs only disarmed those they considered undesirable. Jess, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc. For anyone e not in those categories the Not Zs actually loosened the restrictions. For Not Z party members there were virtually no restrictions.

        The laws we complain about, including the 4473 analog that allowed identification of undesirable gun owners and confiscation were actually enacted by the Weimar Republic. They were merely used by the Not Zs to their advantage.

        It is worth noting that this is the tact the left (commies) has taken; the gun control enacted in 1934, 1939, 1968, 1986, and 1991 (AFAIK 1994 has nonlasting effect) by other admenstruations is what is allowing ATF to compile a (not so) secret illegal registry so that government can disarm those it deems undesirable. The lame stream media is constantly telling us who is undesirable and who is not.

        • Nice rant. It has nothing to do with the point Chip Roy was making.

          As Roy stated and I pointed out, the Germans and others had no Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

      • Come on Deb, let’s hear your brilliant rebuttal. Or are we finally free of your OCD rants about race?

  3. Criminal George Alvarez, driving a stolen $130,000 Range Rover kills multiple people and injures over a dozen others, most severely and not once did anyone say a car with 400+ horsepower and weighing well over 5,000 pounds should limit cars to 100 horsepower or must weight under 2,000 pounds or have accessories that make them look scary and dangerous. Funny, these same people scream and whine about AR-15’s Common sense is completely gone.

    • MB,

      Haven’t been reading the news lately, have ya??? Yeah, they ARE trying to ban SUVs, cars over [pick a number] horsepower, etc.

      A Leftist/fascist is someone who lives in constant fear that someone, somewhere, may actually be having fun.

      Because they never have any.

  4. It should be pretty clear to anyone paying attention that the reported news you see, hear and read is a distraction from the real news that actually affects your life.

  5. Quad shootings. Feel better? Only 4 shot, so that means it’s not as bad.

  6. Exactly.
    Why aren’t we hearing the media and Democrat politicians saying,
    “Nobody needs a high-powered assault vehicle with automatic transmission and high-capacity fuel tank. They’re designed for one thing only: to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible!”

  7. Ban Land Rovers. Made in a socialist nation and typically driven by know-nothing pretentious urban progs. And they are overpriced and hugely POS.

    • Manslaughter is something that can be charged right now. Murder may need a level of intent.

      With such a criminal history he could apply for antifa membership.

  8. One example is the Uvalde murderer. Early reports were that it was transgender. Alleged photos of the murderer dressed as a woman were circulating. MSM took great satisfaction in “debunking” these reports by claiming that the photos were not of the murderer. I certainly can not be certain of the identity of the confused young person in these photos. However; I do know enough about the principals of logic and symbolic logic (the professor asked me to teach the section on probability theory) to understand that proving that the alleged photos of the murderer were photos of someone else wouldn’t prove that the murderer wasn’t a transgender or transvestite.

    Right now the MSM is dedicated to convincing the public that the two Hispanic men who just committed mass murders are right wing new-nazis. The alleged “evidence” falls far short of any reasonable burden of proof.

  9. quote———Vucic called the shootings an attack on the whole nation — and said the person arrested wore a T-shirt bearing a pro-Nazi slogan although he did not shed light on a motive.———–quote

    Does this really surprise anyone, the last two mass murders in the U.S. were also right wing extremists and one even had a swastika tattoo on his body.

    • Say, asshole, you got any proof?

      What’s your source for stating that Alvarez is a right-wing extremist?

      Did any of the photos on the Russian disinfo site purported to be Garcia, show his face?

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  13. The stuff I have read about this incident so far indicates that the guy, who has DUI among his history of many prior offenses, blew a red light and rolled his car before sliding into the crowd at the bus stop. If correct, that does not sound like a targeted attack at all, but simply an accident.

  14. NAILED IT , CRAZIES , USE ANYTHING , CAR , KNIFE , GUN .

    CAN’T STOP CRAZY , SO GO AFTER LAW-ABIDING . ??

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