The story of Minneapolis mass shooter Robin Westman has taken yet another bizarre turn — not because of new revelations about the attack itself, but because of the way major media outlets are covering it. NBC News was forced to issue a correction last Friday after using “the wrong pronoun” for Westman, who murdered two children and injured over a dozen more during a church shooting.
The correction read: “CORRECTION (Aug. 29, 2025, 8:05 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article used the wrong pronoun for the shooter. She used female pronouns.”
That’s right — amid one of the worst tragedies to strike Minneapolis in recent years, NBC’s editorial priority was not the victims, the community, or the shooter’s motivations, but whether the proper pronouns were used for a killer who self-identified as transgender.
Westman, formerly known as Robert, legally changed names in 2020 after a district court affirmed the claim to female identity. But personal writings uncovered after the shooting, some translated from Russian Cyrillic, revealed deep regret and torment about that transition.
According to the New York Post, Westman confessed: “I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself. I regret being trans… I wish I was a girl I just know I cannot achieve that body with the technology we have today.”
In the same journals, Westman described a fixation on “furries” as an escape from self-loathing: “I like feeling sexy and cute but my face never matches how I feel. Maybe that’s why I like furries so much. You can give yourself a new body and face.”
The entries paint a picture of a disturbed individual caught between gender regret, self-hatred, and fantasy — a combustible mix that culminated in horrific violence.
And yet, in the aftermath, the media’s concern has been largely cosmetic. NBC’s correction — centering pronouns over people — underscores a cultural trend where ideology trumps substance. While families mourn, and while communities wrestle with the deeper questions of how mental health, gender identity, and violence intersect, legacy outlets are busy policing language.
Westman’s story, from a troubled transition to a deadly act of violence, demands sober reporting and real accountability. Instead, the coverage has slipped into the absurd — elevating pronoun disputes while burying the shooter’s own words of regret.
