A10 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 5 , 2019
Mass shootings in America
BY MARY BETH SHERIDANmexico city — M exican officials
on Sunday angrily denounced
the mass shooting in El Paso and
announced unusual actions to
protect Mexicans in the United
States — including possibly
charging the perpetrator in Mexi-
can courts.
President Andrés Manuel Ló-
pez Obrador said seven Mexicans
were among the 20 killed in the
attack Saturday in the border
city, and seven more were
wounded.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Eb-
rard said the country would take
action under international law.
“Mexico declares its profound
rejection and complete condem-
nation of this barbaric act, in
which innocent Mexican men
and women lost their lives,” Eb-
rard said in a recorded message
on his Twitter feed.
The remarks represented a
toughening of Mexico’s official
reaction to the shootings. On
Saturday, López Obrador ap-
peared to play down the U.S.
government’s responsibility for
the violence, saying the attack
was “a product of [societal] de-
composition, of problems certain
people have. It’s n ot a generalizedissue.”
But there were increasing indi-
cations that the shooting was
aimed at Mexicans. Investigators
are studying a manifesto they
believe the suspect posted onlinebefore the attack; it includes
screeds against immigrants.
Mexican officials didn’t single
out President Trump, who has
often lashed out at Mexicans and
other immigrants. They madeclear, though, that they were
alarmed by the rise of anti-immi-
grant hate speech in their north-
ern neighbor.
“The intentionality of the at-
tack against the Mexicans and
the Latino community in El Paso
is frightening,” Mexico’s ambas-
sador to Washington, Martha
Bárcena, wrote on Twitter. “NO to
hate speech. NO to xenophobic
discourse.”
López Obrador said Mexico
didn’t w ant to get mixed up in the
U.S. presidential campaign. But,
he said, “We reaffirm our convic-
tion that no one should confront
social problems with the use of
force or by inciting others to
violence.”
The Mexican president, who
built his political career as a
leftist, has surprised his follow-
ers and critics alike by agreeing
to Trump’s demands in recent
months for a crackdown on Cen-
tral American migrants crossing
Mexico en route to the U.S. bor-
der. He has highlighted his good
relations with Trump.
Analysts believe López Obra-
dor has been anxious to avoid
antagonizing Mexico’s largest
trading partner, the recipient of
80 percent of its exports.
But there was no missing the
officials’ angry tones Sunday.
“Mexico is indignant,” Ebrardtold journalists. “But we are not
proposing to meet hate with hate.
We will act with reason and
within the law, but with firm-
ness.”
He said Mexico would ask U.S.
officials how the weapon was
obtained for the shooting. The
Mexican government would also
ask Mexico’s attorney general to
consider charging the suspect,
identified as a 21-year-old Te xan,
with committing terrorist acts
against Mexicans in the United
States.
“A s far as I know, this would be
the first case of this type in
history,” Ebrard said. The Mexi-
can government could even seek
to extradite the suspect, he said.
“For Mexico, this individual is
a terrorist,” he said.
The alleged shooter will al-
most certainly be tried first in a
U.S. court.
If he is convicted, it’s unlikely
he would be sent to Mexico to
stand trial. But the Mexican legal
action could help the country
gain more information on the
investigation.
Ebrard said Mexico would
send a diplomatic note to Wash-
ington “asking respectfully but
firmly that they take a clear,
strong position against hate
crimes.”
[email protected]López Obrador plans action to protect Mexicans in U.S.
President counts 7 dead
in El Paso as country’s
officials mull chargesBY ABBY OHLHEISERThe way we experience mass
shootings online now is with ev-
erything at once. Rumors and
facts go v iral alongside each other
before anything is confirmed.
And raw, often violent video in-
creasingly is posted minutes after
news breaks, followed by ques-
tions about what the dissemina-
tion of these videos accomplishes
— and why we share them in the
first place.
One video posted Saturday,
with more than 250,000 views on
Facebook, appears to begin out-
side a Walmart in El Paso, the
area where an attacker killed
20 people and wounded dozens
more. A man, whose Facebook
name matches that of a witness to
the shooting quoted by media
outlets, walks inside the store
while filming on his phone. He
approaches a body, facedown in
the entrance, in a pool of blood.
Another bystander is already
there, phone also pointed toward
the body. The two nearly collide,
both watching their phones. The
camera lingers on the body for
minutes, even as a handful of
women attempt to leave the store,
shielding the eyes of their chil-
dren to protect them from the
scene.
More than 4,000 people have
shared this video, which was
streamed live and now carries a
graphic-content warning from
Facebook. But others, in the vid-
eo’s comments, pushed back.
“Stop filming,” one Facebook user
wrote as the live video was broad-
cast. “Take that off bro,” another
wrote. “His family is going to see
this.” And another: “This is so
disrespectful to the deceased.”
Videos from bystanders, post-ed in the moment of tragedy and
spread rapidly, often outpace
questions about why we share
them and what the mass broad-
cast of violence does to those who
suddenly can’t avoid it.
As social media continues to
shape how the public experiences
breaking news, the central ques-
tion of how to be a responsible,
informed citizen has shifted from
what makes up your media “diet”
to what you choose to share.
“There is a deep human need to
say, ‘Hey, I was part of this,’ to
document and to share. I don’t
think there’s anything sinister
with that need to share a horrible,
terrible experience,” said Kelly
McBride, chair of the Craig New-
mark Center for Ethics and Lead-
ership at the Poynter Institute, a
journalism research organiza-
tion. But once posted, “you can’t
control what happens to that vid-
eo.”
People can share violence on-
line for the best and worst rea-
sons. Many videos of the El Pasoshooting were shared with calls to
action, asking the public to bear
witness to the dead and work to
prevent other massacres. The stu-
dents who survived last year’s
mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla.,
high school used social media to
broadcast the terror they experi-
enced to the world. And then,
once they had the public’s atten-
tion, a portion of those students
began a movement to change gun
laws.
But even when a video is
shared in an attempt to bring
about change, that doesn’t mean
it goes viral for the same reasons.
Violent videos are often shared
because they are “exciting,” said
Monnica Williams, a professor
and researcher on mental health
disparities at the University of
Ottawa. “It’s like an action movie.”
“A lot of people share things
because they want to get a lot of
traction,” McBride said. “You see
something and you share it be-
cause you know people will get a
reaction out of it.”Violent videos are simulta-
neously newsworthy and trauma-
tizing, important documents of
injustice that can bring the public
to action and “profound inva-
sions of privacy,” McBride said.
The content is valuable to jour-
nalists who are working to tell the
public what happened and to
activists who want to address the
causes of violence. But videos,
often showing the final moments
of a victim’s life, are also noncon-
sensual, she said.
Williams noted that we’ve seen
this before. Raw footage of police
violence against African Ameri-
cans, filmed by bystanders and by
police vehicle and body cameras,
drove news coverage of law en-
forcement brutality in recent
years. But it came at a cost: “A lot
of us in the African American
community, we thought, ‘Oh, fi-
nally there’s a record... and
people are going to be called to
justice.’ That didn’t happen. In-
stead, we just ended up with these
videos of dead black people forentertainment.”
The proliferation of these vid-
eos exposed another bias, Wil-
liams said. The public, including
some media outlets, is more in-
clined to share and sensationalize
images of the bodies of people of
color. “How often do you see a
dead white victim on any form of
media?” Williams asked. “For
some reason, it’s okay to show
dead black and brown bodies.”
Seeing this footage can be espe-
cially traumatic for those who
look like the victims, Williams
said, particularly children.
Viral content of any kind has a
way of outpacing its context, driv-
en by a need to share that causes
people to ask why later. Violent
videos emerging from breaking-
news events are no different. And
sometimes, the news cycle itself
preempts soul searching: Hours
after 20 people died in El Paso, a
gunman in Dayton, Ohio, opened
fire outside a bar, killing nine
more.
[email protected]Some online viewers of tragedy videos balk at post-now, ask-later content
Graphic images from
El Paso prompt ethical
questions about sharingPHOTOS BY HERIKA MARTINEZ/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESA vigil, top and above, was held in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, after Saturday’s shooting in El Paso. The
country’s foreign minister said Mexico’s actions under international law may include an attempt to
extradite the suspect. “Innocent Mexican men and women lost their lives,” Marcelo Ebrard tweeted.