I suspect "independently" is the critical word here. I guess they aren't willing to take the guy's word for it when he says it's because of Gaza. Probably a sound policy in general when suicide/mental health is in play. The followup investigation will have to determine if his competence was intact, at which point the motive will be "independently verified".
Aaron Bushnell clearly said on video what his reasoning for his self immolation was. There is no possible doubt. He said he refused to be complicit in the Genocide in Gaza and was screaming Free Palestine while on fire.
Yet the NPR article made zero mention of Palestine, Gaza or Genocide but managed to cram in the israeli hostages. You can't make this up.
It's literally gaslighting by NPR. We can argue it's intentions but I have a word and it's gaslighting when you try and mess with reality on purpose. Thoughts?
I listen to NPR almost every day and I've never heard them shy away from objective reporting on Gaza. If anything they lean towards sympathy with Palestine.
I agree that the omission in this article is probably a technicality because there is only one source of information and that source died soon after setting himself on fire.
Possibly the reporter who wrote the article and editor sympathises with Israel rather than NPR as a whole. I strongly condemn Hamas and their actions but omitting what the man’s motives for self immolating were when he was very direct and clear about it being an extreme protest against his governments involvement in the genocide against the Palestinian people is fucked. Although it could also be because they don’t want other people to copy him kind of like when they report on mass shooters
Except they did report on it. This is from an early version of the story before they had access to a verified video. This version of the story was only up a couple hours while they were working to verify the information they had.
That's it.
People are really working to make this something that it's not.