Check Yourself: 3 Ways NOT To React To The Congressional Baseball Shooting

06.14.17
Check Yourself: 3 Ways NOT To React To The Congressional Baseball Shooting (Majority Whip Steve Scalise was injured when a gunman opened fire on a baseball practice for Republican Congressmen on June 14, in Alexandria, Virginia.)
Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) was injured when a gunman opened fire on a baseball practice for Republican Congressmen on June 14, in Alexandria, Virginia. Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

Early this morning, a gunman in Alexandria, Virginia, opened fire on a baseball practice for Republican congressmen, injuring several people, including Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana. The suspect, James T. Hodgkinson, was shot by Capitol police and has reportedly died of his injuries.

The story is still developing, which means there’s still a lot of speculation out there as to what happened and why. Also, it’s related to partisan politics, which means there are plenty of excuses for people to say awful things that they might regret later.

Given those considerations, we’ve put together a very short list of suggestions of to remind you of what NOT to do:

  1. Don’t just skim headlines — read the damn articles.
  2. Don’t just use this as an excuse to blame all Republicans/Democrats/etc.
  3. Don’t forget what’s going on in the rest of the nation/world.

For more tips about how to be a responsible consumer of breaking news, we like On The Media’s online handbook.

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