# Why does the media portray mass shooters as mostly white men?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [July 13, 2019, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043 "2019-07-13T23:24:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/61 "2019-08-04T12:25:29Z")
No. If I have ever used the term “fake media” (or “fake news” etc.), it would have been a characterization of the likes of Breitbart or FOX News. If you have evidence to the contrary, link to it. Good luck.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/62 "2019-08-04T12:40:11Z")
Again:
> [@](#):
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> There are 358 reasons for those 358 shootings, though some remain a mystery; in about a fourth of the cases, investigators have discerned no motive.
> As for the rest, some patterns stand out. The fewest occurred while another felony, such as a burglary, was underway. Domestic violence shootings were nearly as infrequent, but were among the deadliest.[…]
>
> About a third were provoked by arguments, typically drug- or alcohol-fueled, often over petty grievances.
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> Another third of the 358 cases — and the most common in cities with more than 250,000 residents — were either gang-related or were drive-by shootings typical of gangs.
>
> But the police and prosecutors say many of those were not directly linked to criminal activity, such as a dispute over a drug deal. More often, a minor dust-up — a boast, an insult, a decision to play basketball on another gang’s favorite court — was taken as a sign of disrespect and answered with a bullet, said Andrew V. Papachristos, a Yale University professor who studies gang behavior.
A few of the examples they report on:
> [@](#):
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> After a day of drinking, singing karaoke and watching football, four middle-aged friends in a small town north of Baton Rouge, La., got into a fight — some said over the choice of music. One shot the other three, then killed himself.
>
> Outside an Orlando, Fla., housing project, lewd comments about a young man’s pregnant girlfriend resulted in 15 to 20 gunshots. A 10-year-old boy who peered out his window at the fracas was struck directly in one eye. One of three wounded adults later acknowledged that “a one-on-one fist fight would have settled the issue,” the police report said.[…]
>
> Police officials say they suspect that as many as half of the 24 victims were not the intended targets; community workers blame self-taught gunmen who are often high on drugs or are drunk. “They are not marksmen,” said Aaron Pullins, an anti-violence worker. “They don’t know how to hold the gun. They just shoot.”
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/63 "2019-08-04T12:47:29Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> Again:
>
> A few of the examples they report on:
Those examples have very discernible and conceivable (if still horrible) motives and circumstances – drunk idiot gets in an argument and start shooting; teenage idiots get in an argument and start shooting; unskilled idiots try to shoot their targets for similarly discernible reasons and hit bystanders; etc. I don’t think they come across as particularly scary to most folks (in relation to the more “media-friendly” mass shootings) – just expected background crime and violence. Our society is inured to such “mundane” sorts of crime and violence, IMO.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/64 "2019-08-04T12:52:34Z")
I think they are only not scary if you don’t live in that social milieu. These people are not setting out to shoot innocent bystanders, but they are acting utterly unconcerned about whether they happen to do so while spraying bullets at the target of their ire. If there were a substantial chance that I or my kids might get strafed with bullets anytime we go to a pool party or barbecue, that would scare the shit out of me.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/65 "2019-08-04T12:55:18Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> I think they are only not scary if you don’t live in that social milieu. These people are not setting out to shoot innocent bystanders, but they are acting utterly unconcerned about whether they happen to do so while spraying bullets at the target of their ire. If there were a substantial chance that I or my kids might get strafed with bullets anytime we go to a pool party or barbecue, that would scare the shit out of me.
Okay, that is indeed scary, but it’s not new. Maybe it was new, at least in terms of occurring with any sort of frequency, in the 70s and 80s. But it’s not new now. The high frequency of rage/ideological stranger mass-shootings is relatively new, and the pace seems to be picking up.
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### Author:  [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2019, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/66 "2019-08-04T13:03:10Z")
It’s not new, but the NYT reporting seems to lean toward it being on the rise:
> [@](#):
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> Among them: eight family members shot as they bade one another goodbye after a reunion in Philadelphia; a soldier struck by a stray bullet during a shootout in a public square in Savannah, Ga.; a 19-year-old college sophomore killed when a gunman sprayed a crowd outside an Ocala, Fla., club.
> In Cincinnati, where last year’s toll of 479 gun deaths and injuries was the highest in nine years, a growing share of shootings involves more than one victim — 1 in 8 attacks with guns in the first half of last year compared with 1 in 12 over the same span in 2010.
> Police officials in some other cities have noted a similar trend, though others say they have not. What is behind the upticks, they said, is a matter of speculation.
> In Rochester, multiple-victim shootings accounted for fewer than 15 percent of victims in 2006; so far this year, they make up 38 percent. Police Chief Michael Ciminelli said that he suspected that social media was playing a role by simultaneously catalyzing minor disputes into deadly standoffs and drawing more people into them.
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### Author:  [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/67 "2025-09-17T01:40:21Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#):
>
> And even there, the black shooters are nearly three times the proportion that African Americans make up of the overall population
Ok but your original problem was with the media reporting spree killers as mostly white men. And now you’re acknowledging that kind of murder is…mostly white men, but the new gripe is with proportion of incidents relative to proportion of population?
In any case, I disagree with the premise of the OP. Gang killings do make the news, just not national news. They aren’t seen as newsworthy. Just as a big pile up on the interstate might be big local news, and not make national news, when a terrorist attack that kills fewer people might be nationally significant.
Bodycount is not the sole basis on which we as a public decide what is important / newsworthy.
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### Author:  [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/68 "2025-09-17T04:40:28Z")
You’re replying to a six-year-old thread. Addressing the OP, who was banned five years ago. For trolling. I don’t think he’s going to respond.
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### Author:  [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/69 "2025-09-17T05:01:56Z")
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### Author:  [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)
#### Post date: [September 17, 2025, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-the-media-portray-mass-shooters-as-mostly-white-men/837043/70 "2025-09-17T05:05:53Z")
**Moderating:**
Agreed, a six year old thread from a banned troll is an unlikely candidate for a successful resurrection. As such I’m closing it. If any poster wishes to revisit the subject they are free to start a new thread and reference back to this, hopefully including clear definitions to frame the debate.
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