According to Los Angeles Times, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik
opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino on December 2nd. The couple
killed fourteen people and injured 22. The attackers were both killed in a gun
battle with the police. The scene was captured on a cell phone video by a local
eyewitness, who appeared to start filming right as shots began ringing out
during the dramatic car chase. The investigation is taking place in Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia, Riverside, Corona, Redlands and San Bernardino. Officials believe
it was an act of terrorism since Farook had some kind of digital contact with
people from at least two terrorist organizations overseas, including the
Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front in Syria and Shabab in Somalia.
Later on the police
found out that Farook, who was born in the United States and worked for the
country, and Malik, a Pakistan national, had an arsenal of ammunition and pipe
bombs in their Redlands home. The arsenal included 2.000 9-millimeter rounds,
more than 2.500 .223 rounds, several hundred .22 long rifle rounds and 19 pipes
that could be converted into bombs. Two federal sources told The Times that
before the shooting and their subsequent deaths, the couple was in the final
planning stages for an assault on a separate building or location “with a lot
more people inside”, possible at a nearby school or college. They based that
assessment on data from digital equipment also recovered from the couple’s
Redlands home.
Most of the investigation
is focusing on Malik and Farook’s digital lives, including how they
communicated early in their relationship, and with terror groups. The couple
jointly pledged allegiance to Islamic State on their social media shortly
before they were killed in the shootout with the police. Two top federal law
enforcement officials said Malik sent at least two private messages on Facebook
to a group of Pakistani friends in 2012 and 2014, pledging her support for
Islamic jihad and telling them she hoped to join the fight one day. One of her
family members in Pakistan told The Times that she posted messages of religious
extremism on her Facebook account and that it was a source of concern for them.
Farook’s friend,
Enrique Marquez, bought two of the guns used in the attack. When Marquez didn’t
show up on December 4 for his shift as a doorman at Morgan’s Tavern, a
pirate-themed neighborhood bad, his co-workers became concerned. Then they saw
a strange note that he had posed on his Facebook page after midnight the
previous day saying “ I am very sorry guys, it was a pleasure”. The co-workers
thought he may have become suicidal but in fact, he entered a mental health
facility after the massacre. According to the United States law enforcement
officials, Marquez has been cooperating with the investigation of the massacre.
Farook and Malik began plotting a terror
attack before they were even engaged and before Malik moved to the United
States last year. The police are still trying to determine whether they had
links to foreign terror organizations, and the investigation still continues.
The gathering process
was quiet complex. All the different news sources talked about what happened,
about the investigation and about what the police think. I decided to use most of the information from
the Los Angeles Times because first of all, it is a news company from
California, which is where the mass shooting happened, second because it had an
easy access to all the stories involving the San Bernardino shooting and all
its updates, and third because it has extended articles that focus on
victimization (a topic that I find really interesting).
To study this event,
first, I looked up various summaries of the shooting. Some of them were really
short so I tried to look for extended versions to make sure I got as many details
as I could. After I felt I was well informed of the event, I looked up articles
that focus on what the police have to say about the case. The Los Angeles Times
gave me an extended summary of the facts and of the investigation that is
currently happening, which is really helpful when writing about criminal
coverage in the media. After learning about the investigation I started looking
into the articles that focus on the society’s response after the shooting. How
they feel and what are the safety procedures they are taking. To finish, I
focused on the articles that talk about the victims and that can be narrowed
into the victimization category.
Since the investigation
is still ongoing it is harder to identify specific trends. Most of the articles
and news reports strictly focus on what the police say rather than subtly
taking a side like news organizations tend to do.
The first trend I would
like to identify is the victimization of the people who got shot. The first
article I found is called “San Bernardino shooting victims: Who they were” by
The Los Angeles Times. The story has an article and a video. The video starts
with all the names of the people who died during the shooting to create an
impact and start off with the victimization process. The first few sentences of
the article say the following: “father of six. A free-spirit who befriended
strangers in the grocery store checkout line. A mother of three who fled
religious persecution in Iran. A woman who was 8 when she and her mother left
Vietnam for a better life. The youngest was 26. The oldest was 60.”
The same thing can be
found on the CNN and BBC websites. The CNN article is called “San Bernardino Shooting:
Who were the victims?.” The story has also a video followed by an article. The
BBC story is called “San Bernardino Shooting: Who are the victims”. As we can
see, all the articles have pretty much the same title. Not only they have the
same title, the content of the articles and videos is also very similar. The
only difference is that the LA Times, has longer pieces on each one of the
victims.
The second trend I
identified is the need for a step-by-step narration of the investigation. The
news organizations saw the need in the audience for an explanation on what is
happening during the investigation, so they wrote this concise articles about
it. Different news organizations wrote articles explaining, as said before, the
investigation step by step. The LA Times had in my opinion the best article. It
is called “Everything we know about the San Bernardino attack investigation”. The
article has different sections such as: “Enrique Marquez, the neighbor”, “An
even better attack was planned”, “The weapons”, “What we know about the
previous attack plan”, and “The shooters’ online communicators”.
ABC news also wrote an
article about the investigation. This one wasn’t as explicit as the LA Times
one but it also narrated the investigation in process. The article is called
“Major developments in the San Bernardino terror investigation”. The CNN news organization
also included a similar article. They also incorporated a video on top of the
page. The article is structured like the one in the LA Times, it had different
sections explaining the different parts of the investigation such as “Target
practice before the attack”, “Sources: Authorities raid Malik’s former home”,
“Former neighbor gave shooter weapons” and so on.
As said before, since
the investigation is not over, all the videos, articles, and reports focus on
what the police want us to know. None of the articles from the different news
organizations actually bring something new to the table, they all dance around
the same topics. At the same time is understandable, the police probably
doesn’t want to leak information that could be dangerous for the community if
reported. As the investigators keep putting pieces together, the articles will
progress with the investigation.
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