It has been a week since six people – including three children – were brutally gunned down at a Nashville Christian school, and according to the New York Post, reporters and staff at CBS News have been ordered not to – accurately – refer to the shooter as “transgender.”

In the hours following the tragic scene at Covenant School, it was revealed by local law enforcement that the accused killer, Audrey Hale, was a biological female who appeared to identify as a male, but the network is reportedly requiring its journalists to steer clear from that fact.

“Avoid any mention”

A day after the horrific events unfolded at the school, a memo from network executives to employees declared, “The shooter's gender identity has not been confirmed by CBS News. As such, we should avoid any mention of it as it has no known relevance to the crime.”

The memo added, “Right now we advise saying: POLICE IDENTIFIED THE SUSPECT AS A 28-YEAR-OLD AUDREY HALE, WHO THEY SHOT AND KILLED AT THE SCENE.”

Guidance to reporters continued, “And move on to focus on other important points of the investigation, community and solutions.”

According to the Post, not everyone at CBS News was on board with the concept, with one insider stating, “This is absurd because the police identified Hale as transgender. If the cops didn't address it, maybe you could avoid it, but withholding information is not journalism.”

Manifesto madness

The left's apparent determination to downplay or censor the truth of what occurred in Nashville last week has been made even clearer by the fact that the manifesto reportedly left behind by Hale has yet to be publicly released.

According to a member of the Nashville City Council who spoke to the Post, the shooter's manifesto will eventually be revealed, but not until the FBI has completed an analysis of its contents.

However, last week Attorney General Merrick Garland said that Hale's motive “hasn't been identified,” despite the fact that the killer herself told a friend almost immediately before her rampage, “One day this will make more sense. I've left behind more than enough evidence.”

Fox News' Tucker Carlson called foul on Wednesday, saying of Garland, “Well, he's lying. They all are lying. We can't see the manifesto because the transgender lobby, which has far more power than you do, has pressured politicians to keep it hidden, but we can be certain what it says. Monday's victims were murdered because they were Christians. It's that simple.”

Perpetrator as victim

Adding to the sense of outrage so many feel due to the inability of the mainstream media to tell the truth about what happened in Nashville is the ongoing attempts by many on the left to paint Hale herself as a victim – driven to despair by supposed anti-transgender sentiments and discrimination.

President Joe Biden got on that bandwagon, taking to Twitter to acknowledge the “joy, strength, and courage of transgender Americans” and provide support for an allegedly mistreated community on the very same day 9-year-old Covenant School shooting victim Evelyn Dieckhaus' funeral was held.

In yet another egregious example of the aforementioned phenomenon, gun control activitists who stormed the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday chanted their gun-grabbing demands while holding up seven fingers – meant to memorialize those they claim died needlessly in Nashville – with shooter Audrey Hale included in that number alongside the six true victims of her violence.

That the mainstream media, the White House, and countless voices on the left are willing to go to such lengths to censor Hale's real motive and cravenly equate her death with those of innocent children and staff at Covenant School in order to further their political goals is perhaps the vilest insult imaginable to the grieving families left in the murderer's wake.