“How are our children still dying and why are we failing them?” exclaimed a survivor of a past mass shooting today live during Fox News’ coverage of the slaughter at a Nashville school today. “Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens, it has overtaken cars,” she added.
A sentiment echoed and furthered by FNC’s John Roberts on-air also Monday in some very strident words of his own.
In a remarkable moment on the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable newser, Ashbey Beasley stepped in front of the camera after an official press conference on the private Christian school tragedy to ask: “Aren’t you guys tired of covering this?” Taking a live feed from CBS affiliate WTVF, Fox showed the alleged survivor of the July 4, 2022 Highland Park, Illinois mass shooting speaking at length about the need for gun reform in America. In language Fox viewers don’t hear that often, Beasley, who says that she is on vacation in Nashville visiting her sister, demanded that lawmakers “step up” to pass real gun reform legislation, you can see below:
We’ve reached the point where people are jumping in front of live cable TV cameras to try and reach legislators and voters. Will America listen? https://t.co/Pmx3a50gYW
— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) March 27, 2023
Law enforcement in the Tennessee metropolis confirmed three children and three adults had been killed in the shooting at the 200-student strong Covenant School, which teaches three to 12-year olds. Police had first received a call around 10:30 AM local time that there was a shooter at Covenant School In a break with mass shooting convention, the shooter was a woman with “two assault-type rifles and a handgun,” say police. Just identified by 28-year-old transgender female, a former student at the school, was “engaged” by police and killed.
As the Nashville affiliate lost Beasley’s audio and then seem to cut to a static road shot, longtime Fox anchor Roberts cut in to add even further urgency to the mother’s words.
Noting to co-anchor Sandra Smith that he didn’t “mean to be speaking out of turn” on the GOP favored outlet, Roberts went clearly off the teleprompter to put the matter in personal and professional perspective:
All right, so we are going to break away because that reporter who was using that camera is obviously setting up to do a live report there, but the woman said it quite succinctly, “Aren’t you tired of this?” Yes, we are tired of this. We are very tired of having to report on school shootings week in and week out. It was just last week with our Alicia Acuna was frantically waiting for her son to come out of the East High School in Denver where there had been shooting, there was the Uvalde, Texas shooting, there was Sandy Hook, Parkland, there were all of these school shootings and yes, I think as a nation we are tired of these. Sandra, I don’t mean to be speaking out of turn but I believe as a parent that there are a lot of people out there who are sick of these school shootings.
Today’s massacre in Nashville is America’s 129th mass shooting of 2023
The post Fox News’ John Roberts Laments “School Shootings Week In & Week Out” After Nashville Rampage; Cable Newser Airs Passionate Gun Reform Remarks From Highland Park Survivor appeared first on Deadline.
