By Harshitha Kothapalli – Editor-in-Chief 

On September 10, 2025, at 12:23 p.m., an American right-wing political activist, Charlie Kirk, was fatally shot while addressing an audience on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. On September 10, 2025, at around 12:24 p.m., local dispatch received a report of a school shooting taking place at Evergreen High School in Evergreen, Colorado, where three students were taken to the hospital in critical condition. On September 10, 2025, Chandra Mouli Nagamallaiah was attacked with a machete by his co-worker, eventually being beheaded in front of his wife and child, over an argument about a broken washing machine. On August 22, 2025, at 9:50 p.m., Iryna Zarutska was fatally stabbed, unprovoked, on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was killed just moments after texting her boyfriend that she was on her way home. 

The following data has been roughly calculated by the Foundation for Civic Advocacy and Security (FCAS) about media coverage over various large news corporations such as CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and more. They found:

1,200 media posts for the Colorado school shooting.

300 media posts for the Ukrainian woman stabbing.

50 media posts for the Indian man beheaded. 

Over 26 million media posts for Charlie Kirk’s assassination. 

The question is, why? Why is there such a vast disparity in the media coverage between all of these tragedies? Why were the students at Evergreen overshadowed, although the events happened within a singular minute? Was Chandra not as eye-catching for the headlines? Iryna? What about the 900 students and faculty who said their goodbyes as they heard the 20 rounds being fired by their very own classmate? What about DeMartravion “Trey” Reed and Cory Zukatis, who were hanged to death in Mississippi? Would the racially-motivated violence imitating the Jim Crow era not generate enough hits?

Charlie Kirk’s assassination was an awful tragedy, and a rude awakening to the vast amount of gun and political violence in today’s world. But so were Melissa Hortman, a  Minnesota lawmaker, and her husband, Mark, who were shot in their homes on June 14, 2025. Chances are, the majority of you didn’t even know about the Hortmans. Before people even get the opportunity to become ignorant, the media is doing it for them. From the seizing of the White House press pool to defunding non-profit news organizations such as NPR and PBS to the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel Live, we’re slowly watching the biased corruption of every media source.

We are actively being failed as a society by the inaccurate media coverage that we witness daily, and most of us don’t even realize it. It is our duty to educate ourselves, to research, to read, to listen, to learn, but how can we do this when the correct resources aren’t even available to us?