Spokane County Sheriff blames media, politics for school shooting

The media and politics are to blame for a school shooting at Freeman High School on Wednesday, according to Spokane County Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich. After offering condolences at Thursday’s news conference, the sheriff attacked society for the violence.

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“When one of the classmates that he knew came up to him and tried to talk him out of it, he put one round in his midsection and one round in his head. He then, indiscriminately, started firing, striking three other classmates who, thankfully, are now recovering in the hospital. That young man who gave his life stepped into the breach we, as a society, created to save his fellow classmates. The next hero in this is the janitor, Joe Bowen. As soon as Joe saw the situation, the shooter had, luckily, ran out of ammunition, had thrown his pistol down, went like this, and Joe confronted him, ordered him to the ground, and then held him there.”

Thank God for that janitor who probably saved a lot of lives.

Then, the news conference with the Spokane County Sheriff got very interesting when he began going after the media.

“This young gentleman got sucked into a counterculture of violence — the culture that is enamored with school shootings. And media? You are to blame for that because you keep giving these people headlines. You keep using their names. You have made them heroes to some people. If I had my way, none of these people’s names would ever be remembered. Sammy’s name would be remembered. Joe’s name might be remembered, but not the shooter’s. Until we start treating these people for what they are — killers, not heroes — they’re going to continue this violence. It needs to end if we are going to have a peaceful society, you need to help us end this violence.”

I don’t know anybody in the media who has ever treated a school shooter as a hero. Now, there may be some fringe, sick websites that have done that, but his suggestion that the media treats them as heroes is bizarre. He’s also criticizing the coverage of the shooting as he’s doing a news conference.

While it’s the media’s job to deliver information, there is validity in Knezovich’s point.

You see it a lot on the cable news channels — where they will go 24-7 on stories and that gives a distorted view of the world. I think we have a lot of people who have in their minds a distorted odds of getting shot at school. It is still an incredibly rare event and there are a lot of kids who are probably getting anxiety about this.

I think the 24-7 coverage is ridiculous. But our show handles it responsibly. We covered the school shooting on Wednesday along with 20 others during our three-hour show.

What the sheriff has to understand is we are also competing with the Internet and social media. Within moments, we saw images on Instagram and Twitter of students locked down in a classroom and every one of them was on their phone. They were all talking about who the shooter was. What used to take the media a day to learn from law enforcement now takes a few seconds.

If names are already out there, is it our job to censor? Is it our job to hide details when they are readily available elsewhere online? I’ve always believed that we should reveal as much as possible and let the listeners decide what’s relevant.

But it didn’t stop there. Sheriff Knezovich went after politicians, too.

“To those in the political world, knock it off. Enough. Both the right and the left. You’re both enamored by a radicalized take. You seem to hate everybody and everything. It’s time for you to end that too because we, the American people, desire better than what you’re giving us. And it’s time to demand better than what you’re giving us.”

Who in the political world is he talking about there? There’s a lot of hate, but again, the radical left and the radical right are a pretty small percentage of the political spectrum. And I’m guessing, while he’s criticizing the political world, that the Spokane County Sheriff is an elected position.

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