Capital Gazette Shooting

Overview

The Capital Gazette Shooting refers to a mass shooting that took place at the offices of the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland in late June 2018. During the attack, five people were killed and two people were seriously injured.

Background

On June 29th, 2018, police responded to reports of a shooting at the Capital Gazette Communications building in western Annapolis. In the attack, five people were killed, including columnist and editorial page editor Gerald Fischman, assistant editor Rob Hiaasen, community beat reporter Wendi Winters, sports reporter John McNamara and sales assistant Rebecca Smith.

Developments

Shooter's Identity

The following day, authorities announced that the suspect in custody was Jarrod Warren Ramos, a man in his late 30s who was carrying a backpack loaded with smoke bombs, flashbangs and grenades. According to court records, Ramos was charged with five counts of first-degree murder.

Ramos had sued the newspaper in 2012 for defamation over a 2011 article about him pleading guilty for criminal harassment. The case was dismissed in 2015. ^[3]

President Donald Trump's Reaction

Following reports of the shooting, Donald Trump tweeted about the attack, saying that his "thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families" (shown below).^[5]

Online Reaction

Milo Yiannopoulos

That day, USA Today reported that Milo Yiannopoulos "recently told at least two news outlets that he wanted vigilantes to start shooting journalists" in private text messages correspondences with journalists from the New York Observer and The Daily Beast.

Meanwhile, Yiannopoulos published a post on Instagram^[2] addressing the issue, claiming that the text messages were "a troll" sent as a "private response." Additionally, he blamed the media outlets for "drumming up fake hysteria" about the messages and argued, "If the Left was truly horrified by violence against journalists, they would have shown it in the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo."

Marco Rubio Tweet

That day, Capital Gazette report Selene San Felice was interviewed on CNN, during which she expressed that she would "need more" than just "thoughts and prayers" (shown below).

"I'm going to need more than a couple days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers, because it's our whole lives have been shattered. And so thanks for your prayers, but I couldn't give a fuck about them if there's nothing else."

On June 29th, Marco Rubio posted a tweet complaining about the use of the "F word" in news reporting, which many interpreted was a reaction to the CNN interview (shown below).^[1]

The Capital Front Page

On June 29th, The Capital put out a paper with the front page headline "5 shot dead at The Capital" (shown below). Over the next 24 hours, a tweet of the front page received more than 19,700 likes and 11,9000 retweets.

GoFundMe

Meanwhile, a GoFundMe^[4] page titled "Help Capital Gazette Journalists" was created, which gathered upwards of $129,000 of its $150,000 goal in less than 20 hours.

Mike Huckabee Tweet

That same day, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee posted a tweet saluting the Capital Gazette staff for putting out a paper the following day, including two nearly identical photographs of himself (shown below).

Shortly after, other Twitter users mocked the photograph and tweet format (shown below).

Search Interest

External References