Media unequipped to decipher Charlie Kirk suspect’s politics
Charlie Kirk murder suspect Tyler Robinson: Why project non-existent political views onto the assailant? Why rush out stories about 'trans ideology' and run with questionable sources?
On Wednesday, September 10, at about 12:23pm, the far-right influencer and podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot in the neck and killed at a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. That part, we know to be true.
Within hours of his murder, media speculation ran rife. The , one of the United States’ newspapers of record, published an article on September 11 that claimed the ammunition recovered from the site of the shooting was engraved with “transgender and anti-fascist ideology”.
Its source for this claim was an internal law enforcement bulletin, circulated among officials. A bold and exciting scoop, if you can believe it. The only problem was it wasn’t true.
Never mind the very notion of a trans "ideology" is absurd (trans people are not an ideology), but the bulletin in question was not verified.
The cited a senior law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation, who “cautioned that the report had not been verified by ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] analysts, did not match other summaries of the evidence, and might turn out to have been misread or misinterpreted”.
The did not retract the article but updated the headline to reflect this revelation. The publication also attached an editor’s note, which said Utah governor Spencer Cox “gave no indication that the ammunition included any transgender references”. How nice of them.
By then, of course, the damage had been done. The , one of Britain's newspapers of record, published an article with the headline "Charlie Kirk killer’s ammunition ‘engraved with pro-trans messages’".
Various far-right pundits took to X (formerly Twitter) to bay for blood; Matt Walsh, right-wing podcaster and supplement salesman, stated: “Trans activists were posting about the shooting before it happened. This is LGBT terrorism.” Sources for this claim are still pending.
After Tyler Robinson was arrested for the shooting, the published an article speculating on the gender identity of Robinson’s partner.
Although Robinson’s partner was not involved in the killing and is also cooperating fully with authorities, based on the volume of salacious news stories written about them, you would never tell.
That’s not all, of course. The had to retract a statement from an anonymous source claiming to be a former high school friend of Robinson’s, who said the suspect “was pretty left on everything”.
An editor’s note now reads: “This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to remove summarised quotes after the verified source who attended high school with Tyler Robinson said after publication that they could not accurately remember details of their relationship."
The later ran with the story "Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson ‘deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,’ Utah gov says." However, the evidence found says less about Robinson’s political leanings and more about how unprepared many in the media are in dealing with the terminally online.
The fact is, Robinson's politics are incoherent, and the engravings on his bullet casings reference internet memes and video games. As notable journalist Ken Klippenstein writes: “Trump and company portray the alleged Utah shooter as left-wing and liberals portray him as right-wing. The federal conclusion will inevitably be that he was a so-called Nihilist Violent Extremist (NVE).”
So why run with such blatant misinformation? Why project non-existent political views onto the assailant? Why rush out stories about “trans ideology” and run with questionable sources? Not only does this read as sloppy reporting, but it only succeeds in eroding trust in a profession already under intense scrutiny.
The answer lies in our media’s shifting priorities in the digital sphere. Researchers Shahla Nasiri and Armin Hashemzadeh write that “quantity over quality in social media algorithms has created an environment where low-quality, sensationalist content thrives at the expense of factual and reliable information”.
This constant churn of output comes at the expense of careful reportage and fact-checking, as it becomes increasingly about pushing sensationalist headlines to generate clicks.
It is a sad fact that trans people (and leftists), as part of an exhausting culture war, have become yet another in a long line of media boogeymen, following immigrants, gays and fidget spinners.
They are made abstract and cast as nebulous dark forces who have come to destroy the world as you know it, including the family unit and civil society itself. Their humanity is flattened into ragebait headlines, designed to be shared ad nauseam in WhatsApp chats.
Outvertising, a not-for-profit LGBTQ+ advertising and marketing advocacy group, found in 2022 there were 7,525 articles published about trans people in the UK, the vast majority with negative framing.
I should not need to tell you this is dangerous. A report published by researchers at University College Dublin (UCD) found discrimination against sexual and gender minorities in Ireland has increased in the last year. This is a trend happening in many parts of the world. Just because Tyler Robinson’s political leanings are incoherent should not mean journalism should follow suit.
- David Monaghan is a writer, journalist and critic who has written about arts, culture, technology, and community issues for various publications
