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After the Tumbler Ridge shooting, you would think the focus would be on the victims.

Instead, here’s what Canada’s biggest newsrooms rushed to publish:

• CBC: “After Tumbler Ridge shooting, false claims about trans people have proliferated online.”
• CP24: “Misinformation about trans people floods social media in wake of B.C. mass shooting.”
• The Toronto Star: “Inflammatory claims about Tumbler Ridge shooter identity surge as elected official claims ‘trans violence.’”
• The Globe and Mail: “In the wake of the Tumbler Ridge shooting, false claims about trans people spread online.”

Four outlets. Four headlines. One storyline.

Notice what’s missing.

Where are the front-page deep dives on the innocent child victims? Where is the sustained outrage over what happened in that classroom? Where is the uncomfortable scrutiny of how a teenager ends up capable of something like this?

Instead, the national press corps moved in lockstep to police online speech.

Now here’s the harder question, the one they don’t seem interested in touching.

Why is it off-limits to talk about the broader youth mental-health crisis?

We are living through a generation facing record levels of anxiety, depression, self-harm, and psychiatric intervention. Prescriptions for SSRIs among young people have surged over the last decade. Rates of identity-related distress have climbed alongside it. That’s not rhetoric. That’s publicly available data.

So when a teenager commits an act of violence, why does the media shut down any serious examination of the cultural and medical environment surrounding young people?

Why is it acceptable to scold the public about “misinformation,” but unacceptable to ask whether our institutions are failing kids long before tragedy strikes?

This isn’t about attacking anyone’s identity. It’s about asking whether we are willing to confront complex, uncomfortable factors — mental health, over-medicalization, social contagion dynamics, online radicalization — or whether certain narratives are simply untouchable.

Because if we can’t ask hard questions about what is happening to developing brains in a culture in crisis, then we are not serious about prevention.

And if prevention isn’t the goal, then what exactly is?

A grieving community deserves more than synchronized messaging. The victims deserve more than narrative management. And Canadians deserve journalism that investigates root causes — not just discourse control.