Shannon Cortez Gooden: Burnsville Gunman the News Media Won’t Name UPDATE: Local Media Breaks Embargo
19th February 2024
Sunday evening, I was riding in the car with my brother Kirby, scrolling through the news on my phone, puzzled that police in Minnesota had not yet named the gunman who killed two cops and a paramedic in the Minneapolis suburb of Burnsville. The gunman also died during the incident, so that identifying him could not possibly interfere with the investigation. Nor was there any reason for the news media to refrain from naming the gunman, because dead men don’t file libel lawsuits. When we got back to the house, it didn’t take too much work to find that the gunman had already been identified by Alpha News.