Signaled Virtue

If you get most of your news from normal sources, you probably don't know who Genesse Moreno is.

Like Aaron Bushnell, Moreno killed herself in an act of rage against Jews and Israel. Unlike Bushnell, Moreno did so by perpetuating a mass shooting with “Free Palestine” written on her gun. In other words, she committed suicide by cop.

Both of these individuals committed violent protest in “support” of Palestine. Why, then, did Bushnell receive far more media coverage?

The answer lies in the Western-based media bias against Israel and Jews, which has been well documented for some time. For a variety of factors, many mainstream Western publications have internalized antisemitism. As a result, they aim to boost the perception of the anti-Israel side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Sometimes this takes the form of “criticizing” Israel (e.g., repeating false accusations, ignoring proven statements if they do not match an anti-Israel narrative, etc.), but other times it can be found in the choice of media coverage. For example, by covering the least violent anti-Israel individuals – like Bushnell, who (while he did kill himself) at least didn’t try to kill anyone else. In other words, the media covered Bushnell and not Moreno because the latter would give the anti-Israel cause a “bad look.”

While institutionally antisemitic publications have recently published “studies” claiming to show the reverse – that the media is biased for Israel, not against – we know this isn't the case. Take the following examples:

• As we're discussing here, Bushnell's suicide was promoted far more than Moreno's, which can only be explained by an anti-Israel bias. Moreno not only killed herself but put a child in critical condition, whereas Bushnell only killed himself. It's self evident that Moreno's mass shooting in “support” of Palestine is at least as newsworthy as Bushnell's suicide, but Bushnell received far more coverage.
• On two separate occasions, mainstream Western news outlets copied Hamas propaganda wholesale and sold it as truth to the public. In the first incident, which occurred in late October 2023, Israel was falsely accused of bombing a hospital. In the second incident, Israel is currently being accused of shooting a group of Palestinian civilians, which has already been debunked. The false accusations have not been retracted as of writing.
• Some Western media organizations are directly implicated in the October 7th pogrom. Some of their affiliates actually participated in the murder of Jewish civilians. While all the implicated organizations have denied having advance knowledge of the 10/7 pogrom, it speaks to these organizations' views on Jewish people that they worked with individuals who took part in the worst antisemitic violence since the Holocaust.

TLDR: You heard about Aaron Bushnell and not Genesse Moreno because some Western-based media companies are systemically biased against Jews and Israel, and reflect these perceptions in their coverage.