Pulse: The Untold Story

The 2016 shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, which killed 49 people and wounded 53, was framed in the aftermath as a premeditated hate crime perpetrated by a shooter, Omar Mateen, who was said to be struggling with his own sexuality. But as reporter and host Trevor Aaronson reveals in this dogged feat of reportage, this was a false narrative. Mateen was motivated by opposition to American military intervention in Iraq and Syria, and his attack on the nightclub was purely opportunistic. This warping of the truth is significant, because the public memory of Mateen’s motive, ultimately crafted by the FBI, shrouded the agency’s systematic failures. Extracting the real story from extensive FBI records, federal case files, interviews, and recordings from the night of the shooting, Aaronson meticulously illustrates how the FBI let Mateen slip through the cracks and allowed his father, Seddique Mateen, who was an FBI informant, to shape the portrayal of the hate crime in order to protect his son. Aaronson and his team raise important questions about public narratives, the politicization of memory, and the relationship between institutional accountability and the need to correct historical records. For the rigor of its journalism, grace of its sensitivity, and service to the truth, Pulse: The Untold Story is recognized with a Peabody Award.