Welcome to The SIFT, a weekly analysis of media coverage by the team at Media Sifter. Each edition provides a wide range of perspectives on a particular story, exposing sub-topics, undercurrents and bias.

The shootings in Las Vegas last week prompted a huge amount of analysis, competing narratives, as well as wider reflections on ongoing issues in the United States. In this week’s edition, we SIFT through some of the dominant narratives that emerged during a traumatic week in Las Vegas.

False Narratives

As news broke of the attack, theories quickly spread online about what was really going on. This became a race between the official account and the spread of alternative narratives.

InfoWars used footage from the attack to support their claims

The pixelated, shaky video footage captured by smartphones during the shooting was played across a wide variety of media channels. Some such as InfoWars used the footage to spread an array of narratives corroborated by eyewitnesses as well as mystery sources such as “High level CIA individuals” who (perhaps conveniently) cannot be named. These theories reportedly created on sites like 4chan, proved to be highly popular, spreading like wildfire across the internet in the immediate aftermath.

4chan was one of the early breeding grounds for theory production

The vacuum of information about the perpetrator, his motives and affiliations, created the opportunity for these theories to gain traction. Often they were supported by evidence and eyewitness reports. In Sign Of The Times we are given the case for the multiple shooter theory through an interview with Rocky Palermo, a victim of the attack;

“Palermo strongly believes there were between 3–5 active shooters during the attack because as he ran away from the initial gunfire, he describes bullets not only raining down, but flying horizontally at the crowd”.

SOTT go on to provide evidence for their source’s reliability,

“Palermo — an avid hunter familiar with guns and ballistics”

Now, accustomed to this battle for information, on the other side of the equation, some media channels were seemingly well prepared to analyse and disprove emerging stories. Buzzfeed created an ongoing update of hoaxes “as they came in” (currently the count is at 20).

Vine stars temporarily became victims

Other attempts to systematically disprove the theories were common. Vice used click-bait to pull in readers for their entertaining rather than informative article. In contrast Snopes provided a robust round up, responding to the numerous theories and claims, with evidence to support their arguments.

Rebuking some of the more outlandish theories

Systematic analysis however was rare. Rather than engaging in tit for tat, mainstream media and general interest news concentrated on a wide ranging discussion of the topic. Vox featured an article about misinformation, explaining that while these stories on their own mean little, they feed into “an ongoing war” online between proponents of these narratives and democratic society which includes the “mainstream media”.

With video the key media following the shooting, video ranking algorithms came under scrutiny as they briefly helped the spread of misinformation. The Verge reported on the boosting of the video “Proof Las Vegas Shooting Was a FALSE FLAG attack — Shooter on 4th Floor,” which received 1.1 million views before being pulled by YouTube, who later brought forward changes to their ranking algorithm. Facebook and Google also had issues with hoaxes, illustrating the growing challenge the internet establishment faces to verify claims and provide fact-based information.

Is the Guardian using bots for SEO optimisation?

Given that false narratives are a hot-topic, articles were carefully SEO optimised to pull in clicks. Specific titles were used in order to appear in search rankings for “Fake News” (a term we do not advocate at Media Sifter), which were then subtly altered when landing on the site, to include more credible terms.

The SIFT’s Take:

While this story did suffer from a huge amount of poor or simply misleading information, the reflex of the mainstream media to dismiss alternative media reporting as ‘fake news’ plays into the hands of the smaller players. They typically create content for those who severely distrust the traditional media. This audience are looking for ideas and ideals that fit their worldview.

The mainstream media are also quick to blame the public themselves for this state of affairs, claiming “never have people been so eager to spread and believe false information.” While we agree that holding on to opinions can make theories and “alternative facts” convenient, placing the blame on a particular audience seems to us as ill-advised. Rather than accusatory buck-passing, we would like to see media channels attempt to create tools for their communities to help them form evidence backed opinions.

Gun Control

After another shooting, a familiar debate around the Second Amendment sprung up. Party lines were immediately drawn and seemed to dominate opinion.

On the right, the media sought to undermine the Democrat response. Fox for example commented on the predictability of the Democrat line rather than focus on the message;

“Dems return to usual script on gun control after Las Vegas massacre”.

Democrat voices featured in articles were unanimously for increased gun control. The Hill, which featured a mix of views, foregrounded the comments of Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein and her quote about a “gun-happy country”,

“ ..I think there are many of us in growing numbers that don’t want a gun-happy country,”

The Republicans on the other hand were characterised again and again by their belief that guns are not the problem, a view summed up in this quote from an NBC transcript of Meet The Press with Republican Congressman Steve Scalise;

“The problem is not that there are too many guns. It’s that there are people that will go out and break the law, whether it’s a gun or some other weapon or a bomb.”

Bump Stocks are nothing to do with share prices, they are designed to increase a weapon’s fire rate

With nothing new really coming from either side, Bump Stocks emerged as a new term for us all to become familiar with. Despite the familiar disagreement over gun control, one thing nearly everyone agreed on was a review of Bump Stocks, including potentially the NRA.

It did appear that pro-gun groups were on the back-foot after this incident. While they maintained a tough line, with Executive Director Chris Cox claiming that “Gun Control Will Not Stop Attacks After Las Vegas” a quote and story covered by NBC and many more mainstream media channels in the US, there were few strong defences. Writers and channels that might otherwise stand up for the right to bear arms took the opportunity to focus their (and the reader’s) attention on theories and alternative narratives.

Opinion pieces calling for increased regulation on the other hand were abundant and fiery. Jeremy Scahill writing for the Intercept, produced one of the more visceral attacks on gun control under the banner “A Sick Country Filled With Guns”, playing on the quote from Senator Feinstein. While sensationalist, the article is filled with evidence to support the writer’s demands. Scahill manages to coherently address the NRA, interpretations of the Second Amendment as well as critique the media’s differential coverage and treatment of perpetrators based on ethnicity and religion;

“When it’s a Muslim shooter, it’s perfectly acceptable to talk about what the U.S. response should be: watchlisting, banning people from entering the country, surveillance of mosques. But when white people do the killing, don’t talk about guns.”

The SIFT’s Take:

The debate over gun control seemed stilted, particularly the coverage around it. It is in our opinion an incredibly important conversation to have in order to keep learning and advocating for improved measures, yet reporting seemed routine.

Maybe story fatigue set in. Or repetition. Both are possible explanations, but perhaps the excitement that alternative theories incite in people is part of the story. Journalists across the field seemed to throw their best into articles decrying false narratives, but that energy was missing, with a few noted examples, when it came to discuss gun control.

The Perpetrator

The shooter who killed 58 people and injured more than 500 was confirmed as Stephen Paddock. Since he took his own life and left little to provide information about his motives, his life and persona became the focus of reports across the media.

This article in the BBC exemplifies the typical ‘regular guy, gone wrong’ narrative seen in most accounts; a quiet accountant who some people found weird with a troubled past but no criminal record. These adjectives and descriptions abounded almost as much as the image of an unkempt Paddock in a white t-shirt smiling to camera, seemingly harmless and friendly in a slightly zany sort of way.

The other image circulated (beyond the false image of a sex offender) shows an older Paddock with his eyes closed. While the traditional media did point to a troubled past and went out of their way to report on Paddock’s father’s notoriety, given the scale of the crime, the picture painted was reasonably positive; a successful, wealthy man who had little reason to carry out such an attack.

It’s no surprise then that a lot of words were dedicated to explaining why he did this. The Daily Mail is a curious example, using obvious clickbait linking Stephen Paddock to prostitutes and “violent sex” while another article in the same publication tells us that Paddock “cared about everybody and tried to make people happy”. The Mail offers no link between the articles, two competing narratives on the same subtopic existing in silos on the same channel.

The Huffington Post were one of a few outlets we found that decried the type of “humanised Paddock” that the BBC and others describe. David Canter writing for Al-Jazeera was more preoccupied with the line between a shooting and a terrorist event:

“If he (Paddock) was not part of a network, but a “lone wolf”, isolated from the pack attacking the vulnerable where he can, does this still make him a terrorist?”

The article asserts that while we should not call Paddock a terrorist, very few attacks truly warrant that label, including those that are carried out by self-stylised jihadists. This idea is supported by “reserach” conducted by Canter. To add to his credibility the article ends with a brief, yet hyperbole filled resumé for “one of the UK’s most eminent applied social psychologists”.

One of the more original takes we found was the ‘White Male’ problem highlighted in Vox and presented as scientific analysis by Tristan Bridges and Tara Leigh Tober for Quartz. They initially state that “The truth cannot be boiled down to any single issue” before using a combination of statistics and social theory to argue that masculinity threat is to blame for this type of violence:

“Mass shootings need to be seen, in part, as enactments of masculinity.”

The SIFT’s Take:

In cases such as this it is vital to pay attention to the way in which the media portray those at fault. There does seem to be evidence that certain groups are treated differently than others in the press. As highlighted by Scahill the characterisation of the white ‘lone wolf’, brown ‘terrorist’ and black ‘thug’ has become almost cliché.

Much like the theories seeking to spread misinformation, claims about Paddock reflect an ongoing obsession in the media to concentrate on a killer’s motives. This might be considered simple human nature, to understand why something happened, and there is clearly value in improving our collective knowledge on such matters. However, wild, unfocused speculation based on hearsay and uncorroborated evidence does little to educate readers or help them form fact-based opinions.

The Victims

In an event like this the balance of focus between victim(s) and attacker(s) is worth paying attention to. In this case tragically 58 people were killed, each with their own life and story.

While the perpetrator received individual features, a host of angles and subplots, the media tended to try to focus on the victims as a group. A single story. The Guardian’s feature typifies this approach — a large image showing 21 smiling faces. We are told that victims included a Nurse, local government workers and student. Unlike the perpetrator we do not hear about any negative aspects from their history.

Tragedies involving large numbers of people, especially in the West, now seem to be followed by specially designed tribute pages telling the personal stories of the victims. This relatively new and carefully curated format uses non-traditional layouts and divergent colour schemes.

CNN’s tribute page to the victims of the shooting

The Washington Post had a special feature entitled The lives lost in Las Vegas featuring photos of many of the deceased, as well as the default avatar from Facebook for those they were unable to provide a photo for. CNN put together this special page allowing people to pay tribute to the victims and click through to learn more about the individual. In many cases we hear of the victim’s bravery during the event and very specific details about their lives such as being part of the “school-parents’ association.”

The SIFT’s Take:

In the sources analysed, the allocation of attention was skewed towards the perpetrator rather than the victims despite the huge disparity in numbers. This imbalance strikes us as problematic yet uncomfortably natural in the modern media landscape.

These incidents expose how the media game has become numbers oriented — the share of voice allocated based on clicks and shares. It’s worth reflecting on the fact that a large share of voice was given to the messages of celebrities totally unconnected with the events in Las Vegas, as well as the frankly bizarre sub-plot involving an Instagram star and a Medal of Honor recipient. These stories are optimised for algorithms, tagged for rankings and designed to capture your attention. We leave you to make up your own mind.