The Selective Apathy and Martyrdom of Media

Opinion by Benjamin Lo, Grade 9 Three weeks ago, right wing podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot in the state of Utah at Utah Valley University. In the days that ensued, social media erupted with tributes, hashtags, and viral threads memorializing him as a martyr of political violence. Yet, for many observers, the sudden wave of sympathy for a political figure feels strikingly selective. Kirk was often considered a polarizing figure, known for spreading misinformation and stoking division. However, after his death, his story was rewritten. Suddenly, his glaring flaws were minimized, controversies downplayed, and his story and legacy was compared to Martin Luther King’s, despite his abhorrence of MLK.

Almost immediately, a portion of the online community attempted to assign the blame to convenient and marginalized cultural targets: trans people, LGBTQ+ activists, and left wing groups. Despite a severe lack of evidence connecting the shooter to any of these communities, or as a matter of fact, any community, speculation ran rampant, fueled by political bias and a desire for a clearer story. The rush to find a scapegoat highlights yet a facet of martyrdom: the creation of villains to accompany the hero, very often at the expense of truth. In the end, misinformation is weaponized to fit ideological agendas rather than reality.

This phenomenon is not unique to Kirk. Media, both tradition and digital, has long suffered from selective apathy and martyrdom, which is the tendency to lionize some figures while ignoring or vilifying others, often because or with regards to their ideologies or stories. This results in a distorted moral and ethical world where audiences and readers are encouraged to grieve, cheer, or condemn not based on truth, but on emotions and the narrative that algorithms or editorial programs choose to display.

So, why do we see this pattern? Part of it is the media’s inherent love for drama. Social media platforms reward content with high levels of emotion and theatre. Outrage is just more interesting than reason. Another part is the cultural convenience; some people are easier to display as heroes, while others are easier to erase. The end effect is the same: a society that remembers selectively, and constructs martyrs and villains according to levels of interest rather than truth.

As we reflect on Kirk’s death, the question isn’t simply about whether he was good or bad, or if he deserves mourning. It is whether we, living a media obsessed world, accept a system that glorifies, forgets, villianizes, scapegoats, and distorts our understanding of who we are willing to honor in life, and in death.