Police tape surrounds the Old National Bank after a gunman opened fire on April 10, 2023, in Louisville, Kentucky. | Source: Michael Swensen / Getty
The person who took it upon himself to wage a deadly mass shooting in Lousiville, Kentucky, has been largely lent sympathetic coverage by news outlets that have described him more as a popular high school sports star than the apparently mentally afflicted and disgruntled employee he displayed himself to be.
On Monday morning, Connor Sturgeon, 25, entered the Old National Bank building in downtown Louisville and proceeded to open fire, killing at least five people and injuring at least eight others before he was killed, either by responding police or by suicide.
The Old National Bank is where Sturgeon had been working. But when he found out that there were plans to fire him, Sturgeon went into vigilante mode, armed himself and doled out a far worse punishment than the loss of employment.
Knowing that much, a number of media outlets still decided to focus their coverage on Sturgeon’s positive attributes.
A quick Google search of the name Connor Sturgeon turns up many such results accompanied by photos of his smiling face.
https://twitter.com/TalbertSwan/status/1645565977646755840?s=20
The Daily Beast described Sturgeon in its headline as “Varsity Hoop Star-Turned-Banker.”
The New York Post wanted its readers to know that Sturgeon “suffered ‘multiple concussions’” as a high school basketball player, seemingly excusing such behavior because he had an alleged brain injury.
The Independent used one of its headlines to call Sturgeon a “basketball star.”
The Daily Mail wondered in its headline how Sturgeon, an “All-American,” could have committed such an atrocity since he was “from a middle-class Indiana family starting his career in banking.”
The way the media focused on Sturgeon’s basketball career, you’d think he was playing professionally. Instead, the basketball references point to Sturgeon’s time in high school more than eight years ago.
The truth of the matter is that Sturgeon is apparently your classic disgruntled employee who went into his place of work and opened fire with impunity.
At least, that’s how mainstream media described it when a Black gunman stormed his workplace and killed 12 people in Virginia Beach in 2019.
In that case, the New York Times made sure its readers knew from the start that gunman DeWayne Craddock was motivated by “Perceived Grievances.”
The New York Post’s coverage included a headline that emphasized how Craddock “was violent with co-workers before Virginia Beach shooting.”
Even more telling, the coverage of the gunman who killed three people and injured five others on Michigan State University’s campus in February was absent of any such sympathy that has been directed toward Sturgeon.
NBC News devoted an entire article to how Anthony McRae “turned ‘evil and mean’ after his mother died.”
The Detroit News had a report focused on the “warning signs” from “McRae’s past.”
The New York Post, yet again, reported that “McRae was ‘totally lost’ and ‘looked like a wolf man.’”
None of the ensuing coverage of Craddock or McRae ever featured their smiling faces in an apparent attempt to show them in a sympathetic light.
Now, compare and contrast that to how Sturgeon is being remembered as an “extremely intelligent” young man with a promising future in banking — even though he was apparently about to be fired.
This is America.
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