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Traditional news organizations were cautious in their mid-afternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot — instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.
In practical terms, though, it mattered little.
Gory video of the shooting was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed. Millions of people watched.
Video was easy to find on X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube — even Truth Social, where President Donald Trump posted official word of the conservative activist’s death. It illustrated how the “gatekeeping” role of news organizations has changed in the era of social media.
Kirk was shot at a public event before hundreds of people at a Utah university campus, many of them holding up phones to record a celebrity in their midst and savvy about how to disseminate video evidence of a news event.
On X, there was a video showing a direct view of Kirk being shot, his body recoiling and blood gushing from a wound.
One video was a loop showing the moment of impact in slow-motion, stopping before blood is seen. Another, taken from Kirk’s left, included audio that suggested Kirk was talking about gun violence at the moment he was shot.
For more than 150 years, news organizations like newspapers and television networks have been accustomed to gatekeeping when it comes to explicit content — making editorial decisions around violent events to decide what images and words appear on their platforms.
But in the fragmented era of social media, smartphones and instant video uploads, editorial decisions by legacy media are less impactful than ever.
Images spread across U.S. and Canada
Across the country in Ithaca, N.Y., college professor Sarah Kreps’s teenage sons texted her about Kirk’s assassination shortly after school was dismissed and they could access their phones.
No, she told them. He was shot, but there were no reports that he had died. Her son answered: Have you seen the video? There’s no way he could have survived that.
The videos were posted and reposted at lightning speed. One person on X urged “stop the violence” but then included a clip of the shooting. Several people took to social media to plead for people not to spread the images. “For the love of God and Charlie’s family,” read one message, “just stop.”
U.S. conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was shot and killed Wednesday during a public appearance at a university in Utah. He was 31.
YouTube said it was removing “some graphic content” related to the event if it doesn’t provide sufficient context, and restricting videos so they could not be seen by users under age 18 or those who are not signed in, the company said.
“Our hearts are with Charlie Kirk’s family following his tragic death,” YouTube said. “We are closely monitoring our platform and prominently elevating news content on the homepage, in search and in recommendations to help people stay informed.”
Meta’s rules don’t prohibit posting videos like Kirk’s shooting, but warning labels are applied and the videos are not shown to users who say they are under 18. The parent company of Instagram, Facebook and Threads referred a reporter to the company’s policies on violent and graphic content, which they indicated would apply in this case, but had no further comment.
An X representative did not immediately return a request for comment.
Recurring issue on social media
It’s an issue social media companies have dealt with before, in equally gruesome circumstances.
Kreps at Cornell, who is the author of the forthcoming book Harnessing Disruption: Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society, pointed out that Facebook was forced to contend with people wanting to livestream violence with a mass shooting in New Zealand in 2019.
Images and videos coming out of Gaza during Israel’s nearly two-year-long military campaign, showing disturbing footage of Palestinian’s deaths and injuries, have also spread far and wide on social media.
Some images of the Kirk shooting seeped out into more traditional media. TMZ posted a video of Kirk in which a shot and a voice saying, “Oh, my god,” can be heard, but Kirk’s upper body was blurred out. A similar video with a blurred image of Kirk was posted on the New York Post’s website.
Kreps said news outlets can send an important message in being cautious in what they show.
“The traditional media can amplify and validate behaviour,” she said. “It can be a signal for how things should be stigmatized, rather than validated or normalized.”