Jordan Salinas, a 35-year-old healthcare worker from Kimberly, Idaho, drew his FN Five-seveN pistol on August 1 and opened fire on a gunman who was massacring people at a Twin Falls In-N-Out Burger. Salinas and an off-duty Idaho state trooper drove the shooter out of the restaurant and into a parking lot, where 24-year-old Chad Williams died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Three people were killed and seven wounded before Salinas and the trooper engaged.

NBC's headline for the story? "Armed bystander distracted gunman."

Distracted. Like he jingled his car keys. Like he yelled something witty from behind a dumpster. Jordan Salinas put rounds downrange at an active mass shooter while his girlfriend was trapped in the line of fire, and the best NBC could muster was "distracted."

Twin Falls Police Chief Matthew Hicks had a different word for it. "We believe their actions helped drive the suspect away from the scene, preventing further casualties," Hicks said at a press conference on August 2. Twin Falls County Sheriff Jack Johnson went further: "These people are true heroes in our community. They diverted the shooter and without a doubt saved many lives."

Salinas himself told Fox News he felt "no fear" when he made the decision to engage. He described using OODA loop decision-making — observe, orient, decide, act — training he'd pursued after a shooting incident in 2021 convinced him to get serious about firearms. "He did not like it when bullets started firing both ways," Salinas said of the gunman. "There's a task that needs to be done, and we're the ones who need to do it."

That's a man who ran toward gunfire while everyone else ran away from it. A full-time caregiver for his wheelchair-bound brother who had never pointed a weapon at another living thing before that Saturday afternoon.

You can watch Salinas describe what he saw and his actions for yourself

11 people were injured severely enough to need to go to the hospital, two remained in critical condition, including taxi driver Terry Dudley, who was shot twice in the back while charging his Tesla near the restaurant. The shooter's motive remains under investigation, with Williams' family cooperating with authorities and the FBI setting up a digital tip line.

Now here's what's worth paying attention to. The shooting itself got covered. ABC, CBS, NBC — they all ran stories. Three dead at an In-N-Out is hard to ignore. But the coverage of Salinas tells you everything about how the editorial rooms work. NBC's own article devoted zero direct quotes from Salinas. Zero quotes from the off-duty trooper. The word "hero" appeared only in a police quote, never in NBC's own editorial voice.

Left-wing media critics will point out that technically the story was covered, and technically it was. In the same way your local paper technically covers a city council vote by printing the result on page B-14 next to the used car ads.

Salinas posted on Facebook afterward that "the last 24 hours have been overwhelming." His police chief called him a hero. His sheriff called him a hero. The people inside that In-N-Out who are alive right now because bullets started flying both ways would probably use the same word.

NBC went with "distracted." That tells you less about Jordan Salinas than it does about NBC.