In the early hours of Thursday morning, a gunman struck the Florida State University campus. Three students were shot and the gunman was killed by police. Reporting on the story was widespread.
The New York Times went where few would go in reporting on the news story though. They slid in a paragraph at the end of their story about the shooting referencing the recent controversy surrounding the football program and Tallahassee police:
The university, one of the largest in Florida, has about 40,000 students enrolled in 16 colleges spread across Tallahassee, the state capital. The university has recently drawn criticism after reports that athletes on its football team, a contender for this year’s national collegiate championship, had received preferential treatment from the police in criminal matters.
The Times has arguably been leading the way into reporting on the controversies at Florida State. Their investigations into the relationship between the football program and the police department raise serious questions. But is the immediate aftermath of a school shooting the time to reference that? It gives the impression that the Times is trying to insert their reporting into the football program into a tragic shooting on campus.
The football program and school shooting seem to be totally unrelated. If you attempt to connect the two stories at all, perhaps through the behavior of the police involved that have been questioned, it’s still a mighty stretch to get there. Reading that closing paragraph to that story just left a bad taste.
UPDATE: The Times has now removed any mention of the Florida State football program, or recent controversies from the article. The closing paragraph now reads as follows:
The university, one of the largest in Florida, has about 40,000 students enrolled in 16 colleges spread across Tallahassee, the state capital.
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