WND Obsessed Over Release Of Alleged Manfiesto Because Shooter Was Transgender

Back in 2015, WorldNetDaily wasn’t terribly interested in reporting on the racist manifesto of Dylann Roof, who killed nine black people in a South Carolina church — perhaps because Roof’s views largely mirrored those promoted by WND. When it came to the school shooting in Nashville, the revelation that the shooter allegedly had written a manifesto prompted WND to obsess over it and demand its release, presumably due to the fact that the shooter was allegedly transgender. Peter LaBarbera complained in a March 30 article:

The Nashville Metro Police Department caved to public pressure and has agreed to publish trans child-murderer Audrey Hale’s pre-rampage “manifesto,” but only after FBI profilers pour over the document first.

LGBT activist groups had urged Nashville police not to release the manifesto, but conservatives and others demanded that it be treated like other mass-murderer screeds that have been made public through the media in the past.

LaBarbera also whined that the transphobic intentions of the right-wingers like him demanding the manifesto’s release:

Meanwhile, as “progressive” Democrats used the trans killer’s murderous, anti-Christian-school attack to crusade for anti-gun laws, LGBT leftists used conservatives’ reaction to it to buttress their longstanding claim that most opponents of transgender and LGBT agendas are guilty of “hate.”

“In a grotesque expression of their hate, the GOP’s far-right extremists – which now extends to most of their party – used the horrific school shooting in Nashville yesterday to attack and smear transgender people,” wrote homosexual radio talk show host Michelangelo Signorile, who bills himself as one who “fearlessly [takes] on the right wing, the main stream media, and the bigots with hard-hitting progressive talk.”

LaBarbera accused the lack of its immediate release to be a “cover-up” in an April 19 article:

As millions of Americans wonder why the “manifesto” of Audrey Hale, the “trans”-identified mass-murderer of three children and three adults at a Nashville Christian elementary school, has not been released to the public, one “honest liberal” journalist is trying to do something about it.

Glenn Greenwald, the free-speech-crusading homosexual man of the left who regularly pillories the Democrat-subservient corporate media, said he is trying to hire a lawyer to pry the “manifesto” from the government’s hands. Why? Because the public deserves to know what motivated Hale to commit what, in liberal media jargon, has all the characteristics of an anti-Christian “hate crime.”

It has been 23 days since Hale, a woman who claimed the opposite-sex pronouns “He/Him” in a public profile, broke into the Covenant School in Nashville where she was once a student and fired a total of 152 rounds shooting to death three 9-year-old students and three adult staff members. Hale herself was fatally gunned down by quick-acting police before she could slaughter more innocents. After the murders, Nashville police revealed that Hale left behind a “manifesto” but neither released it nor promised its imminent release.

An anonymously written May 2 article hyped a lawsuit calling for the manifesto’s release:

Before Audrey Elizabeth Hale stormed the private Covenant Presbyterian School in Nashville and killed three children and three adults, she wrote a manifesto.

But authorities still are concealing it, depriving the community of what might prove to be important information about the assault.

Note that the anonymous author erased Hale’s reported transgender identity. Bob Unruh hyped another right-wing attempt to force the relase of the manifesto in a June 3 article (while also erasing Hale’s alleged transgender identity):

When mass shooter Audrey Hale, deceased, planned to shoot up a Christian school in Nashville, she wrote a manifesto.

Weeks after the massacre of six people, including three children, it’s still being concealed.

And the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, in one of the cases seeking its release, is asking a court for an order that the FBI release it.

[…]

WILL’s client is The Star News Network, which is based in Nashville and continues to investigate the motivation of the shooter.

The FBI has denied access to the manifesto, and so WILL sued.

LaBarbera returned for an Aug. 28 article that at least somewhat admitted that the demand for the manifesto’s release is politically driven, further complaining that parents at the school are demanding to keep the manifesto unreleased:

Conservatives are outraged over the double-standard they see in the release of mass-murderers’ “manifestos,” contrasting the quick release of a Florida mass-killer’s murderous, anti-black screed with the ongoing non-release of transgender-identified Audrey Hale’s manifesto five months after she shot up a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.

Hale shot six people, including three students, dead at the Presbyterian Covenant School March 27, before she was gunned down by police at the scene. Ever since then, conservatives have been clamoring for authorities, including the FBI, to release of the information Hale left behind explaining her motives.[…]

Nevertheless, the quick release of a manifesto of Florida mass-murderer Ryan Palmeter’s manifesto, which police called the “diary of a madman” for his stated goal of killing black people, has led critics to say this is only the latest example of a two-tiered justice system and biased media coverage that repeatedly favors narratives on the Left. Palmeter allegedly killed three black people inside and outside a Dollar General store in Jacksonville on Saturday before turning his gun on himself.

This, by the way, is the only reference to Palmeter at WND, which otherwise censored all mention of his manifesto.

LaBarbera also complained that parents at the school object to releasing the manifesto, and he leaned into denying their rights in favor of so-called “transparency” (which, of course, is really all about smearing all transgender people as wannabe killers):

However, there is a complicating factor in the comparison between the two senseless slaughters: parents representing more than 100 families with children at Covenant School are suing to keep the Hale documents – journals, laptop files and other materials that collectively comprise what is called the killer’s “manifesto” – private.

They argue that a full release of the documents could “traumatize survivors of the attack or inspire copycat shootings,” as USA Today reported in June. Media companies and groups favoring transparency in government are fighting in court to release the documents.

[…]

As WKRN reported in late May, parents of Covenant School students are urging the court to release only selective documents from Hale’s manifesto, while shielding most of her writings from the public.

“This Court can shield Jane Doe and John Doe from a lifetime of abuse and harassment by the shooter from beyond the grave,” the attorneys for the parents say in the court filings, obtained by WKRN. “The Parents believe that the large tranche of documents they do not object to will provide the public with the information needed to understand this horrific crime.”

“We are in ‘uncharted waters’ because we have a unique opportunity following a mass murder at an elementary school to prevent the shooter’s writings and anything else that is likely to inspire future attacks from being released and causing pain and suffering to the victims,” the lawyers write, according to WKRN.

But transparency advocates say shutting down information could set a dangerous precedent for controlling the public’s access to information in future criminal cases.

LaBarbera didn’t explain why the rights of the parents don’t matter here when they usually are defended by WND in most other circumstances.