Forbes Faces Backlash Over Prediction Feature Appearing in Story of Shreveport Killings

There’s no doubt about it that Shreveport is a particularly disturbing rampage. It’s not just that this turdnugget killed eight children, but that they were primarily his kids, and that he traveled to try and kill them all before offing himself. For someone like this, the last step really should have been the first. He might have gotten some sympathy instead of making it clear he’s somewhere on a scale below toe jam.

No one is going to say it’s not disturbing, either. 

Forbes is under fire at the moment, not for downplaying this in its coverage of the shooting, but in a feature that appeared in the story.

A Forbes article about the recent mass shooting that left eight children dead invited readers to play the odds on whether the tragedy would lead to new gun control laws — igniting a firestorm online.

The news site published a story Monday detailing the rampage, in which a 31-year-old Louisiana man is suspected of gunning down his seven children and their cousin between the ages of 1 and 14 at three locations in Shreveport.

The suspected gunman, Army veteran Shamar Elkins, killed himself after the massacre.

Embedded in the article was a “ForbesPredict” box asking: “Congress WILL/ WON’T pass new gun safety legislation before 31st December 2026?”

The feature then urged readers to “make your prediction,” offering a green check mark for yes and a red “X” for no. Sliding the cursor over each option changes the phrasing of the sentence.

The feature was widely blasted online as stunned readers recoiled at the idea of turning a child massacre into a prediction game.

On one hand, I get it. Considering how the mainstream media tends to be rather ghoulish about mass killings in general, using the bodies of dead kids as a soapbox to push their agenda, this sure looks a bit more of that.

But on the other, they’re just asking whether or not people think Congress will pass gun control this year. That’s not an uncommon ask in interactive features on mainstream media sites these days, so I’m not sure I really get the outrage.

I mean, I guess the fact that they call it “predict” versus something else that’s just asking you what you think will happen gives it the wrong vibe or whatnot, but even then, it’s a feature that was named well before Shreveport.

Perhaps more interestingly, I haven’t seen all that much outrage over it. Then again, I don’t follow a ton of anti-gun nutjobs on social media. I think that most people see what Forbes did here and take it at face value. They created an interactive feature to boost engagement, applied it to a big story, asking people what they think, and the usual suspects absolutely lost their minds over it.

They want everything to revolve around their sensibilities.

Asking people to predict what will happen isn’t exactly new, and Forbes has had the ForbesPredicts thing for a while. They just don’t like that it made them feel a particular kind of way despite knowing this. Their feelings are on them, though, not Forbes.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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