Virginia Shooting: Gunman kills 2 on live television

CNN’s reporting of Wednesday’s shooting of two Virginia journalists has bizarrely focused on the shooter’s previous ownership of gay porn websites. But on Thursday, one of the network’s anchors — Don Lemon — finally called out his colleagues over the coverage, which at times came off as homophobic.

“The gay porn site thing, to me, I don’t really see the relevance of it,” Lemon said in a video posted by Media Matters. “If it’s not illegal, then what’s wrong with him owning gay porn sites or straight porn sites or as a journalist forming a media company like Dan Abrams did? I don’t see anything wrong with it. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s an American — as long as it’s two consenting adults, I don’t see what difference it makes.”

Alison Parker and Adam Ward were doing a live interview with Vicki Gardner, the head of Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce, about the 50th anniversary celebration for Smith Mountain Lake at Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia, at around 6:45 am Wednesday morning.

The shooter opened fire during this live spot and then fled the scene. The two journalists died shortly after 6:45 am, according to CBS News. Gardner was also shot, but she’s in good condition after an emergency surgery, WDBJ reported.

Within the 24-hour period after the murder of two WDBJ-TV staffers in Virginia, there were still places in the US where people were busier finding a place to buy a gun than they were understanding America’s record on gun violence. Below is a map of those searches, captured by Google News Lab, of “gun shops” (red) or “gun control” (blue), according to metropolitan areas.

We don’t know much about the people conducting these searches, but we do know, simply, that a lot Americans looked for a gun shop this week in a country that already has more guns than people.

Two networks have pulled planned programming due to unfortunate similarities to Wednesday’s shooting in Virginia.

The USA network delayed the season finale of its hacker drama Mr. Robot — originally scheduled to air August 26 — by one week. It will now air Wednesday, September 2, at 10 pm Eastern. In its place, USA re-aired the first season’s penultimate episode.

The father of one of the two Virginia journalists shot and killed on live television on Wednesday vowed to make it his life mission to fight for gun control.

“Next week, it isn’t going to be a story anymore, and everybody’s gonna forget it,” Andy Parker, father of WDBJ reporter Alison Parker, told Fox News’s Megyn Kelly in the clip above from ThinkProgress. “But, mark my words, my mission in life … I’m going to do something, whatever it takes, to get gun legislation, to shame people, to shame legislators into doing something about closing loopholes in background checks and making sure crazy people don’t get guns.”

What’s the difference between the on-air shooting of two Virginia journalists and all the other gun violence in the US? As Peter Nickeas of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The internet had to see the fear on a woman’s face as she realized she was about to die.”

Nickeas, who covers crime and shootings for the Chicago Tribune, drew on his experience covering one of the most violent cities in America in a chilling post on Facebook, reflecting on how much of what Americans saw in the Virginia newscast on Tuesday is everyday life for far too many people in violence-torn parts of the country.

The on-air shooting of a reporter and a photographer in Franklin County, Virginia, on Wednesday morning was terrifying. It has given Americans a very close look at what some of America’s tens of thousands of annual gun deaths look like.

But the televised tragedy also demonstrates that the country’s focus on mass shootings — which are often the only events that lead to substantial discussions about national gun policy — misrepresents both the total amount of gun violence in the US and what gun violence typically looks like.