Fox News misidentified a woman who shot and injured two people at a Houston mega-church on Sunday as assigned male at birth and transgender. One of the victims was her child.
The woman was biologically female, but used male names as aliases.
In an article originally published yesterday, Fox News reported that Genesse Ivonne Moreno “was born as a man” named Jeffrey Escalante and identified her as a “transgender woman” in the article’s headline.
This is not true: Houston Police Commander Christopher Hassig said yesterday in a press conference that Moreno was female, but used aliases such as “Jeffrey Escalante.”
Fox News did not issue a correction or note an update to its reporting, it removed any references to Moreno being transgender and added that “preliminary reporting indicated the shooter was transgender, but in a Monday news conference, investigators identified her as a woman.”
Alejandra Carabello, a journalist and professor, tweeted that she was angered by how Fox handled its mistake.
“Oh no you don’t Fox News,” she wrote. “You don’t get to make incendiary claims without evidence and then stealth edit your articles without a full retraction and correction.”
Because of Moreno’s aliases—and a Libs of TikTok tweet that stated that Moreno was transgender—Houston Police investigated Moreno’s identity.
“There are some discrepancies. We do have reports she used multiple aliases including Jeffrey Escalante,” the Daily Dot reported Commander Hassig said yesterday. “She has utilized both male and female names, but through all of our investigation to this point—talking with individuals, interviews, documents, Houston Police Department reports—she has been identified this entire time as ‘female,’ ‘she,’ ‘her.’”
This isn’t the first time that Fox News has misreported information concerning the LGBTQ+ community: In June last year, the outlet reported that President Joe Biden’s White House even promoted “grooming and pedophilia” by flying the Progress flag, which is a new version of the Pride flag that emphasizes diversity.
“Fox News is promoting stochastic terrorism against the LGBTQ community,” an X user tweeted at the time. “Pure and simple.”
