RCMP wording, newsroom style guides, and a fast-moving misinformation cycle are driving the dispute
THUNDER BAY – MEDIA Analysis – As Canadian media reported RCMP’s identification of the suspect in the Tumbler Ridge killings, much of the coverage referred to the shooter as female and used she/her pronouns — even as police also acknowledged the suspect was born male and had transitioned.
Now before we get into this analysis: First let’s focus on the fact that this killer murdered nine people, and injured 27 others. This is a terrible crime. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families left behind to try to understand what happened.
Over the course of today, and last night as the RCMP in Tumbler Ridge – a small Canadian community that was suddenly thrust into the National and International spotlight, people became very upset online over how the RCMP identified the shooter.
That choice has triggered backlash online, with some critics accusing newsrooms of “woke” reporting or “hiding the truth.” The reality is more procedural: reporters largely followed how police described the suspect and how the suspect identified publicly, while different outlets made different calls on how much biological detail to include.
What RCMP said about gender and identification
In a press briefing summarized by Global News, B.C. RCMP Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald said the suspect “identified as female” and began transitioning around six years ago, adding police were identifying the suspect as they chose to be identified publicly and on social media. He also stated the suspect “was born as a biological male” and had transitioned to female.
That framing — identity as lived publicly, paired with an explicit acknowledgment of sex at birth — is why you are seeing two different approaches in the reporting:
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some outlets leading with “female” or “transgender woman” (reflecting public identity), and
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some outlets explicitly adding “born male” (reflecting RCMP’s “biological male” line).
Why “female” showed up early in breaking coverage
Before the suspect was publicly named, police issued public-safety alerts and descriptions during the active incident. A Canadian Press timeline notes an emergency alert warning of a suspect “described as female in a dress with brown hair.”
In other words, “female” wasn’t initially a political choice by journalists — it was a description of presentation used in an urgent public-safety context. That early language often carries forward into subsequent reporting, especially when police later confirm the suspect identified publicly as female.
The core confusion: sex vs. gender — and the word “female”
A major driver of reader anger is that “female” can be read two ways:
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as a biological/sex category, or
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as a gender identity category (how someone lives and identifies).
Many newsrooms, advocacy guides, and journalistic ethics frameworks treat gender identity as a key part of accurate identification — similar to using a person’s name and pronouns as they used them publicly — while also cautioning against turning identity into a “why” unless there’s evidence it’s relevant to motive.
This is why you’ll see wording like:
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“female-identifying” (a compromise that signals identity while avoiding a purely biological reading)
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“transgender woman” (a more direct, widely used term in style guides)
Why some outlets did not foreground “born male”
Even when police disclose sex at birth, some editors minimize it unless it is clearly relevant, for two reasons:
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Harm minimization and precision
Publishing “born male” can be accurate in a narrow biological sense, but it can also become a magnet for stigma or generalized blame. Ethics guidance commonly warns against emphasizing identity characteristics unless they are necessary to understand the story. -
Relevance
Police have not publicly tied gender identity to motive. Without that link, many newsrooms treat sex-at-birth detail as context rather than the headline — and some omit it entirely.
The backlash: how it spread, and why it’s hard to defuse
Coverage of the suspect’s gender identity quickly became political content online, even as authorities said motive remained unclear. Castanet documented the rapid shift from facts of the investigation to social-media debate and partisan claims.
Once that debate takes off, the reporting decision becomes a litmus test: critics interpret “she” as ideological, while others view misgendering as inaccurate and harmful. The result is a trust problem that’s less about the incident itself than about how audiences define “truth” in identity terms.
A transparent approach that reduces reader confusion
For outlets trying to keep reporting factual — and keep tempers from boiling over — the clearest construction is usually:
“RCMP identified the suspect as a transgender woman who identified publicly as female; police said she was born male and began transitioning about six years ago.”
That single sentence:
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attributes the information to police,
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states identity as publicly lived,
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includes the biological detail for readers who consider it essential,
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avoids turning identity into motive.
It also helps audiences understand that the “female” label in much of the coverage is not necessarily an attempt to conceal facts — it reflects RCMP’s description and the suspect’s public identity, as reported by multiple outlets.
Perhaps however, what should be the real focus is why this happened, and what can be reasonably done so future school shootings can be prevented.
Online “detectives” like them or not have uncovered that the shooter had previous engagement with RCMP and had apparently mental health issues.
James Murray
