It is a journalist’s duty to report the truth, yet so many news outlets covered themselves in shame by bowing and scraping to honour the “transgender identity” of the man who carried out of the deadliest mass shootings in Canadian history.
by Tyler O’Neil
Reprinted, by kind permission, from
The Daily Signal (Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC),
February 12, 2026.
URL: https://www.dailysignal.com/2026/02/12/shameful-news-outlets-refer-man-who-massacred-children-woman-transgender/
Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, was born a man and he died a man. He spent his last day on Earth killing his 39-year-old mother, his 11-year-old stepbrother, a 39-year-old teacher, three 12-year-old girls, and two boys, 12 and 13, before taking the coward’s way out and turning the gun on himself. He reportedly wounded about 25 others at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and critically injured two more.
Initial reports on the shooting described Van Rootselaar as appearing female, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police erased all doubt Wednesday at a press conference.
“I can say that Jesse was born as a biological male who approximately six years ago began to transition to female and identified as female, both socially and publicly,” Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said.
I understand the impulse to treat people with respect when they claim to identify as the gender opposite their sex. Many consider it common courtesy to refer to a person by preferred pronouns, rather than insisting on biological truth. In some circles, it is a faux pas — if not sacrilege — to state the naked truth that a man is still a man, regardless of what gender he claims to adopt.
But, if ever there were a situation where common courtesy need not apply, it would be here.
Do you really want to extend “common courtesy” to a school shooter? Do you really want to say, “I know he slaughtered children, and his own mother, but we’ve got to be nice and call him a girl, now”?
For crying out loud, let’s stop this insane charade.
The vast majority of mass shooters are male, so the initial news reports that the shooter was a woman immediately invited skepticism.
When the RCMP’s update clarified that the shooter was really a man dressed up as a woman, every journalist following the story learned the truth. There is no excuse, at that point, for calling the shooter a woman or using female pronouns for him.
Yet, outlet after outlet did it.
News outlets gaslight readers
CNN “reported” that “the suspect is an 18-year-old woman.” The very next sentence? “She was born biologically male and transitioned about six years ago, police said.” CNN also referred to the shooter as “an 18-year-old female resident of the town.”
The New York Times used female pronouns for the shooter, stating that “she killed her mother and stepbrother before fatally shooting several others, and later herself.”
The Associated Press merely referred to the shooter using female pronouns, without even disclosing to readers that police identified him as male.
Reuters’s headline ran, “Canadian police identify 18-year-old woman as suspect in mass school shooting.” Reuters did acknowledge that the shooter had been “born male,” but not until the 11th paragraph, and only after describing Van Rootselaar as a “woman” and using female pronouns for him throughout.
USA Today acknowledged the transgender identity in the second paragraph of the story, but still used female pronouns for the shooter throughout.
Why the pervasive bias in favor of the shooter’s ‘identity’?
Why did news outlets do this?
First, McDonald, the deputy commissioner, set the stage for it by saying that police would refer to the shooter as a woman because the shooter had presented himself that way. Apparently, accuracy about biological sex takes a backseat to political correctness, even when it means honoring the ravings of a mass murderer.
Second, The Associated Press Stylebook, which many outlets use as a benchmark for how to report the news, has taken an aggressively pro-transgender activist position.
The stylebook urges journalists to “identify people as transgender only when relevant, and use the name by which they live publicly.” It recommends avoiding “mention of a person’s gender transition or gender-affirmation surgery in news coverage” unless “it is central to the story.” Why? Because this might be “intrusive and insensitive.”
This guidance helps explain why The Associated Press appears to have considered the shooter’s transgender identity irrelevant enough to be excised from the coverage entirely. The AP, you see, didn’t want to be “insensitive” to Mr. Van Rootselaar.
Forgive me if I don’t care about being insensitive toward a mass murderer.
The AP Stylebook goes out of its way to silence dissent against transgender orthodoxy. While the “guidance” on transgender issues is steeped in transgender ideology, it flatly declares that journalists should “not use the term transgenderism, which frames transgender identity as an ideology.”
The Daily Signal appreciates the clarity of the AP Stylebook on matters such as spelling protester with an “er,” but we emphatically reject its “guidance” on issues like this where it takes a leftist partisan stance.
A reckoning on transgender insanity
This horrific shooting comes shortly after a jury ordered doctors to pay $2 million to a detransitioner who regretted having her breasts removed. It comes after the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recommended against transgender surgeries for minors, and even said the data doesn’t support hormones for minors.
The tide is turning against transgender orthodoxy, and this moment should shame news outlets into reconsidering their near-religious devotion to it.
This article is reproduced by kind permission of the Daily Signal Media Group, Washington, DC.
About the author
Tyler O’Neil is senior editor of The Daily Signal, published by the Heritage Foundation, Washington, DC, and the author of two books:
• Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center
(Nashville, TN: Bombardier Books, 2020). Paperback: 240 pages. ISBN: 9781642934397
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Hate-Pay-Corruption-Southern/dp/1642934399
• The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government
(Nashville, TN: Bombardier Books, 2025). Paperback: 336 pages. ISBN: 9798888457672
URL: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/The-Woketopus/Tyler-ONeil/9798888457672
URL: https://www.amazon.com/Woketopus-Money-Manipulating-Federal-Government/dp/B0DFVK74TZ
