Wednesday’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, California has led to a media uproar about gun violence—journalist Igor Volsky exposed congressmen who had received money from the NRA, and the New York Daily News has run provocative covers about gun control for the past few days.
But the media may have finally gone too far in its pursuit of answers about the shooting.
On Friday afternoon, both CNN and MSNBC ran live reports from the home of the suspects in the California shooting, Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook, which is still an active crime scene. Anchors on both networks went through the suspects’ belongings—at one point MSNBC showed Mr. Farook’s mother’s driver’s license without blurring her private information (in hacking terms, this is referred to as doxxing).
MSNBC weekend anchor Melissa Harris-Perry was horrified by her network’s actions, but she was far from the only one:
Corporate ownership has consequences. Wow. Just wow.
— Melissa Harris-Perry (@MHarrisPerry) December 4, 2015
There is literally no breaking news re: the #SanBernadino. @CNN and @MSNBC literally just created chaos and called it "breaking news."
— deray (@deray) December 4, 2015
https://twitter.com/Yair_Rosenberg/status/672839183438843905
MSNBC just broke Twitter because it's the first time everyone has agreed on a topic on social media
— Michael J Smith (@michaeljsmith0) December 4, 2015
MSNBC is doing something so stupid that even Twitter can agree that it's stupid. That's a special kind of stupid.
— Ryan Rosenblatt (@RyanRosenblatt) December 4, 2015
https://twitter.com/jhoffman/status/672833839627137025
https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/672840290710003714
https://twitter.com/embeedub/status/672833360952193024
https://twitter.com/dreamoforgonon/status/672843187371778048
MSNBC digging through personal items, including the child. This is CRAZY. pic.twitter.com/wYIuiTfGNT
— Amanda Wills (@AmandaWills) December 4, 2015
Let’s all be thankful Don Lemon wasn’t around to make things even worse.
