We Want Media

I got my coffee at Weinstein the day after the Virginia Tech shooting. “He was Chinese,” the barista said, pointing at the newspaper, “here on a student visa from China,” she said summarizing the article. And she eyed me, a Chinese-American, warily without lowering her voice. “Damn foreigners,” she said, “we should stop letting them in and take care of our own people.”

I’ll mention the barista was black only because I’m sure you readers would want to know –- not because I think racial markers matter in this scenario. However, the media seemed very concerned with racial markers after the Virginia Tech shooting, with MSNBC reports declaring the shooter may have been “Chinese or Asian." Why bother making the distinction that he was possibly Chinese after using the umbrella term, “Asian”? Why, of course, to suggest -– to heavily, heavily suggest something.

Major U.S. media outlets erroneously reported the shooter was a Chinese student and made no apologies for their mistakes. We now know the gunman was Cho Seung-Hui, of South Korean descent. However, the issue is not the shooter’s race, but rather the lack of accuracy and transparency in the media in this regard.

On April 17th, the Chicago Sun-Times said “the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history was a Chinese man who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.” It has since been corrected without a trace of transparency or mention of the change.

NewsMax headlined with: “Gunman Was Chinese National.”

I remember reading many more articles to this effect. However, backtracking them is incredibly difficult due to unapologetic online corrections. So much for honestly and accurately capturing history.