(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – In another example of absurd “political correctness” and “woke culture,” CBS news has prohibited its staffers from calling the perpetrator of the recent Nashville school massacre “transgender” despite evidence that she had started to refer to herself as a “trans man,” a report reveals.
On March 27, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, a female calling herself “Aidan” on social media, murdered three 9-year-old children and three staffers over 60 at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee.
Hale was gunned down during a shootout with local law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting.
Top CBS News executives have now instructed the network’s staff not to use the word “transgender” in reference to the shooter, The New York Post reported.
“The shooter’s gender identity has not been confirmed by CBS News,” the network’s executives insisted in a memo obtained by The Post.
“As such, we should avoid any mention of it as it has no known relevance to the crime. Should that change, we can and will revisit,” the memo added.
According to the report, the directive was given to employees last Tuesday in a morning editorial call by executive vice president of newsgathering Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, and the senior vice president of standards and practices Claudia Milne, according to sources close to the network.
“Right now we advise saying: POLICE IDENTIFIED THE SUSPECT AS A 28-YEAR-OLD AUDREY HALE, WHO [sic] THEY SHOT AND KILLED AT THE SCENE,” the Tuesday memo said.
“And move on to focus on other important points of the investigation, community and solutions,” the memo elaborated.
The cited sources reveal Ciprian-Matthews and Milne took 15 minutes to instruct the CBS News staff about the directive.
That allegedly “bewildered many journalists” because Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Hale’s transgender identity might be relevant to the motive.
“This is absurd because the police identified Hale as transgender. If the cops didn’t address it, maybe you could avoid it, but withholding information is not journalism,” commented a source described as a CBS News insider.
The directive has changed the network’s coverage of the shooting in Nashville, with no more mentions of Hale’s gender identity.
“We are waiting to see the manifesto [written by Hale] and any details about a motive. As we say in our guidance, we will then review and revise our reporting,” a CBS spokeswoman told The Post, refusing further comment.
Another source on the CBS News execs’ call said the network’s 150 staffers were “stunned into awkward silence” as the executives were “twisting themselves in knots” to censor their reporting on the Nashville shooting.
“You need to look at all the facts of the case. Everyone should be invested in understanding what happened. I don’t know how you do that without understanding the full scope of the situation,” the source stated.
