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New York Daily News front cover divides America: ‘God Isn’t Fixing This’

FIRST they shocked the US with its controversial take on the San Bernardino shooting, now this newspaper has gone one further by calling out who they think is to blame.

Matt Young and Emily Moulton
3 min read
December 4, 2015 - 3:10PM
News anchor outraged by headline 'God Isn't Fixing This'

FIRST it shocked the United States with it’s controversial front page on the San Bernardino shooting, now this newspaper has gone one further by calling out who it thinks is to blame.

Following on from it’s provocative “God Isn’t Fixing This” headline on Thursday which reportedly divided the country, the New York Daily News released an image of it’s Friday edition which is just as contentious.

The front page features a picture of gunman Syed Farook with the headline “The News Says He’s a Terrorist”.

But it’s what it says underneath that is sure to have the rest of America talking.

In brackets are the words “But so are these guys...” with the pictures of Robert Dear, who killed three people in the Planned Parenthood mass shooting in Colorado Springs; Dylan Roof, the Neo-Nazi loving white supremist responsible for the Charleston Church shooting that claimed the lives of nine African Americans; Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary shooter and James Holmes, who shot and killed 12 people at the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado.

But what makes this front page more controversial is the three words in brackets next to it.

“AND this guy” with a picture of Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Associtaion (NRA), with the caption: “Countless Gun Laws Killed”.

The subheading then says Farook, who along with his wife slaughter 14 people after his work Christmas party, joins a long list of “murderous psychos” who were able to carry out their crimes because of the “NRA’s sick gun jihad against America in the name of profit”.

The new front page was quickly embraced by some on Twitter.

The paper’s Thursday front page sparked wide debate across America.

The San Bernardino shooting was the nation’s 353rd mass shooting for the year, but still, running the provocative front page is a bold move for a publication in a country where 78 per cent of people (318.9 million) identify as Christian.

According to the Pew Research Centre, the United States remains home to more Christians than any other country in the world, and a large majority of Americans — roughly seven-in-ten — continue to identify with some branch of the Christian faith.

Yet that didn’t stop the publication to call out lawmakers for offering prayers instead of real legislation to combat America’s gun violence problem.

“Prayers aren’t working,” the no-holds-barred front cover reads.

“As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end gun scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes.”

The controversial front cover.
The controversial front cover.
Syed Farook in his driver’s license photo
Syed Farook in his driver’s license photo

It was followed inside by a story written by journalist Rich Shapiro about the differing response to the massacre by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. While the former immediately called for stricter gun laws, the latter “were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control,” he wrote, including three — Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina and Rick Santorum — who had failed to even acknowledge the shooting had happened by the time the paper went to press.

The newspaper’s editors have a point. For all the talk, there seems to be little action.

Republicans failed to make any mention of tightening gun laws in America as they tweeted messages of support, instead:

The Democrats, while not specifically mentioning the NRA, at least addressed the issue.

Connectictut Senator Chris Murphy, who was serving at the time of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown said it best, criticising those who offered “thoughts and prayers” to victims of the San Bernardino shooting.

Of the 30,000-plus people killed by firearms each year in the United States, more than 11,000 of those are homicides. That means there are more than 30 gun-related murders daily.

The San Bernardino massacre marked the 353rd mass shooting in America this year alone, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which defines a mass shooting where at least four people are either injured or killed.

“You have 14 people dead in California, and that’s a horrible tragedy. But likely 88 other people died today from gun violence in the United States,” Everytown for Gun Safety’s Ted Alcorn told the New York Times.

In 2015 to date, according to the Gun Violence Archive, 12,223 people have died as a result of gun violence in America, while another 24,722 people have been injured.

“We’re having a mass shooting every day, it’s just happening under the radar,” Jon Vernick, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun Policy and Research, told news.com.au.

“Mass shootings are terrible tragedies and the hardest gun violence to prevent, but I would argue that that’s what we need to be focused on.

“We don’t have what Australia has, and that’s the political will to act.”

— youngma@news.com.au

Originally published as New York Daily News front cover divides America: ‘God Isn’t Fixing This’

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Original URL: https://www.couriermail.com.au/business/companies/new-york-daily-news-front-cover-divides-america-god-isnt-fixing-this/news-story/c665de91f36461c9dc592b73b3f1713d